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•f 


THE  HIGHER  LIFE  IN  ART 


THE 

HIGHER  LIFE  IN  ART 


A SERIES  OF  LECTURES  ON 
THE  BARBIZON  SCHOOL  OF  FRANCE 
INAUGURATING  THE  SCAMMON  COURSE  AT 
THE  ART  INSTITUTE  OF  CHICAGO 


BY 

JOHN  LA  FARCE 


NEW  YORK 

THE  McCLURE  COMPANY 
MCMVIII 


Copyright , 1908 , fry  The  McClure  Company 


RESEARCH  LICRARY 
GETTY  RE£  INSTITUTE 


THE  SCAMMON  LECTURES 


John  Young  S common,  a prominent  citizen  of  Chi- 
cago, was  deeply  concerned  in  everything  pertaining  to 
the  higher  life  of  the  city.  He  had  the  active  co-opera- 
tion of  his  wife,  Mrs.  Maria  Sheldon  Scammon,  inter- 
ested in  all  the  works  of  her  time,  and  especially  devoted 
to  the  fine  arts.  Mrs.  Scammon,  who  survived  her  hus- 
band, provided  by  her  will  for  a fund,  left  to  the  Art 
Institute  of  Chicago,  for  lectures  upon  the  history, 
theory  and  practice  of  the  fiv£  arts,  to  be  known  as 
“ The  Scammon  Lectures.”  In  May,  1903,  Mr.  La 
Targe  delivered  at  the  Art  Institute  the  first  course  of 
Scammon  lectures.  Unforeseen  circumstances  have  de- 
layed until  now  the  publication  of  this  first  series. 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 


First  Lecture — The  School  3 

Second  Lecture — Delacroix  27 

Third  Lecture — Millet  69 

Fourth  Lecture — Decamps  and  Diaz  95 

Fifth  Lecture — Rousseau,  Dupre,  Daubigny  127 

Sixth  Lecture — Corot  151 


INDEX 


181 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 


FIRST  LECTURE 

CHASSERIAU. 

“THE  ROMAN  BATH."  from  lithograph  by  lamy. 

“PORTRAIT  OF  HIS  TWO  SISTERS." 

CARTOON  FOR  “PEACE.” 

“PEACE”  (Fragment),  formerly  in  the  cour  pes  comptes,  now  in  the 

LOUVRE. 

DELACROIX. 

“THE  BARQUE  OF  DANTE.”  the  louvre. 

FANTIN-LATOUR. 

“HOMMAGE  A DELACROIX.” 


SECOND  LECTURE 

GERICAULT. 

“AN  OFFICER  OF  THE  IMPERIAL  GUARD.”  (portrait  of  mr.  m.) 

THE  LOUVRE. 

“THE  WOUNDED  CUIRASSIER.”  the  louvre. 

“THE  RAFT  OF  ‘LA  MEDUSE.’”  the  louvre. 

DELACROIX. 

“EPISODE  OF  THE  MASSACRES  OF  SCIO.”  the  louvre. 
“ENTRANCE  OF  THE  CRUSADERS  INTO  CONSTANTINOPLE.”  the 

LOUVRE. 


IX 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 


“DEATH  OF  MARGUERITE'S  BROTHER.”  from  lithograph  by  a. 

MOUILLERON. 

“L’AMENDE  HONORABLE.”  now  in  the  willstach  museum,  Phila- 
delphia. 

“CHRIST  IN  THE  TEMPEST.”  now  in  the  collection  of  sir  w.  c. 

VAN  HORNE,  MONTREAL. 

“ST.  SEBASTIAN.”  from  lithograph  by  eugene  le  roux. 

“COAST  OF  MOROCCO.”  now  in  the  collection  of  james  j.  hill. 
“ALGERIAN  WOMEN  AT  HOME.”  the  louvre. 

“HELIODORUS  CAST  OUT  OF  THE  TEMPLE.”  church  of  st.  m l- 

PICE,  PARIS.  (FROM  THE  ETCHING  BY  GREUX.) 

“TIGRE  COUCHE.”  now  in  the  collection  of  james  j.  hill. 
“JACOB  WRESTLING  WITH  THE  ANGEL.”  church  of  st.  sulpice, 

PARIS. 

“TOBIAS  AND  THE  ANGEL.”  church  of  st.  sulpice,  paris. 


THIRD  LECTURE 


MILLET. 

“ON  THE  CLIFFS  OF  LA  HOGUE.”  now  in  the  collection  of  john 

G.  JOHNSON. 

“MARINE.”  IN  THE  COLLECTION  OF  JOHN  G.  JOHNSON. 

“GOOSE  GIRL  BATHING.”  drawing. 

“SPRING.”  THE  LOUVRE. 

“LA  FILEUSE.”  now  in  the  collection  of  j.  j.  hill. 

“THE  GLEANERS.”  the  louvre. 

“THE  END  OF  THE  DAY.”  now  in  the  collection  of  august  Bel- 
mont. 


FOURTH  LECTURE 


DECAMPS. 

“THE  SMOKER.”  from  lithograph  by  j.  laurens. 

“LANDSCAPE  IN  ASIA  MINOR.”  from  lithograph  by  j.  laurens. 
“A  STREET  IN  SMYRNA.”  the  louvre. 


X 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 


“ITALIAN  SUBJECT.”  from  lithograph  by  c.  nanteuil. 

“LE  CHASSEUR.”  from  lithograph  by  francais. 

“LA  SORTIE  DE  I/ECOLE  TURQUE.”  the  louvre. 

“THE  TOWER  OF  BORDEAUX.”  from  lithograph  by  eugene  le 

ROUX. 

“PORTE  DE  FERME.”  now  in  the  collection  of  john  w.  simpson. 
(from  a lithograph.) 

“THE  WITCHES.”  from  lithograph  by  eugene  le  roux. 

“THE  CROSSING  OF  THE  FORD.”  the  louvre. 

“DEFEAT  OF  THE  CIMBRI  BY  MARIUS.”  from  lithograph  by 

EUGENE  LE  ROUX. 

“JOSEPH  SOLD  BY  HIS  BRETHREN.”  now  in  the  collection  of 

JAMES  J.  HILL. 

“REVENGE  AND  DEATH  OF  SAMSON.”  from  lithograph  by 

EUGENE  LE  ROUX. 


DIAZ. 

“DESCENT  OF  THE  BOHEMIANS.”  boston  museum. 

“A  POND  IN  FONTAINEBLEAU  FOREST.”  now  in  the  collection 

OF  PERRY  BELMONT. 

“TURKISH  WOMEN  IN  LANDSCAPE.”  from  lithograph  by  j. 

LAURENS. 


FIFTH  LECTURE 


ROUSSEAU. 

“UNE  ALLEE  DE  VILLAGE”  (Village  of  Becquigny).  now  in  the 

COLLECTION  OF  GEORGE  J.  GOULD. 

“SUNSET— FOREST  OF  FONTAINEBLEAU.”  now  in  the  collection 

OF  P.  A.  B.  WIDENER. 

“LE  PUY.”  now  in  the  j.  j.  hoagland  collection. 

“IN  THE  FOREST.”  unfinished  picture  now  in  the  collection  of 

SIR  W.  C.  VAN  HORNE. 

“THE  CHARCOAL  BURNERS’  HUT.”  now  in  the  collection  of 

GEORGE  J.  GOULD. 


XI 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 


DUPRE. 

“ILLUSTRATION  TO  SIR  WALTER  SCOTT.”  now  in  the  william 

H.  VANDERBILT  COLLECTION. 

“ON  THE  ROAD.”  now  in  the  Chicago  art  institute. 

DAUBIGNY. 

“MOONLIGHT.”  now  in  the  collection  of  fir  george  dhimmonm, 

MONTREAL. 

“THE  MILL  AT  GOBELLE.”  now  in  the  collection  of  william  l. 

ELKINS. 

“DIEPPE.”  NOW  IN  THE  collection  of  HENRY  c.  FRICK. 


SIXTH  LECTURE 


COROT. 

“GENOA.”  NOW  IN  the  collection  of  m.  rterson. 

“THE  COUNTRY  CHURCH.”  now  in  the  collection  of  joiin  a. 

JOHNSON. 

“VILLE  D’AVRAY — MORNING  ” now  in  the  collection  of  j.  j.  hill. 
“LANDSCAPE.”  now  in  the  collection  of  sir  george  drummond, 

MONTREAL. 

“DANSE  DES  NYMPHES.”  the  louvre. 

“LA  DANSE  DES  AMOURS.”  in  the  collection  of  george  j.  gould. 
“LA  PETITE  CURIEUSE.”  now  in  the  collection  of  sir  w.  c.  van 

HORNE,  MONTREAL. 

“GIRL  READING.”  now  in  the  collection  of  james  j.  hill. 

“THE  WOUNDED  EURYDICE.”  now  in  the  collection  of  james  j. 
hill. 

“L’ ATELIER.”  now  in  the  collection  of  p.  a.  b.  widener. 


Xll 


FIRST  LECTURE 


These  lectures  addressed  to  students  but  also  to  a 
future  large  audience  as  being  the  beginning  of  the 
record  of  the  Scammon  lectures.  The  choice  of  a subject 
determined  somewhat  by  memories  of  interest  vn  the 
art  of  France  some  fifty  years  ago.  There  and  then  war 
raged , as  very  usual , in  the  world  of  art  and  literature. 
Certain  names  such  as  those  of  Ingres  and  Delacroix 
represented  the  main  conflicting  ideas.  Appreciations  of 
that  time  for  Millet , Rousseau , Dupre , Corot , Gerome , 
Diaz , Decamps.  Men  of  a still  older  school  had  memo- 
ries of  the  eighteenth  century  by  which  they  judged. 
No  one  artist  absolutely  recognized  as  a full  authority. 
Chasseriau;  his  unfulfilled  promise  of  conciliating  oppo- 
sites. His  early  death.  His  influence  on  Puvis  de  Chavan- 
nes.  His  view  of  the  advantage  of  passing  from  one 
school  to  another's  influence.  Chasseriau' s admiration  for 
Delacroix;  at  that  moment  the  turn  of  the  tide  against 
that  great  painter.  Some  description  of  his  life, his  ideas ; 
the  character  of  his  works.  His  dramatic  expression  not 
theatrical . The  tendency  and  practice  of  painting  for 
some  long  period  had  been  more  and  more  towards  a 
set  scene  as  in  the  theatre.  Nature , of  course , the  ab- 
solute reverse.  Delacroix  also  loved  beauty  as  an  aim: 
wherein  we  see  Millet  differ.  As  also  the  Realists , who 
were , like  Millet , in  harmony  with  the  master  through 
admiration . Notice  of  the  poorer  technical  work  of  the 
middle  and  end  of  the  nineteenth  century.  Loss  of  me- 
chanical methods  of  the  past  and  the  new  unsettled. 


FIRST  LECTURE 


MR.  PRESIDENT,  ladies  and  gentlemen,  and  my 
fellow-students  (notwithstanding  my  greater 
age,  I am  still  a student)  : First  I shall  say  a few  words 
concerning  my  choice  of  subject  for  these  lectures,  and 
I need  also  to  remark  that  these  lectures  are  of  a 
special  nature.  They  are  addressed  to  students,  but 
they  are  also  addressed  to  a larger  audience  and  a 
future  one,  as  they  form  the  beginning  of  the  record 
of  the  Scammon  lectures. 

Now,  one  of  the  dreams  that  beset  the  older  man  is 
the  possibility  of  giving  some  of  his  experience  to  the 
younger,  as  you  know,  sometimes  to  your  cost.  Ever 
since  man  was  man  the  older  generation  has  handed 
down  what  it  could  of  its  memories  and  its  experiences. 
Some  of  them  have  survived ; many  are  lost ; but  we  are 
built  up  entirely  of  these  memories  from  the  time  when 
our  ancestor,  under  the  name  of  Prometheus,  inherited 
the  invention  of  the  use  of  fire.  From  them  to  the  text 
books  that  we  use  to-day,  we  are  but  a series  of  memories 

3 


FIRST  LECTURE 


reflected  upon  other  memories,  which,  set  at  so  many 
angles,  give  us  what  we  think  to  be  new  points  of  view. 
Therefore  the  older  man  feels  justified  in  talking  of  his 
memories,  though  he  may  know  that  only  a few  of  them 
are  to  be  of  any  use.  That  is  to  say,  they  may  not  be 
of  much  use  at  the  moment,  but  there  is  at  some  time  a 
possibility  of  their  filling  a serious  gap  of  need.  So, 
for  instance,  the  historian  has  always  accumulated  his 
facts  and  his  reasonings,  and  long  after  we  see  that  it 
might  have  been  possible  to  use  his  information,  and  oc- 
casionally some  of  us  do  so.  These  ideas  have  come  up 
to  me  more  especially  upon  my  deciding  the  precise  sub- 
ject which  shall  be  a theme — what  the  French  call  a 
canvass — for  the  statements  and  perhaps  the  reasonings 
which  I may  address  to  you. 

On  being  asked  to  give  a course  of  lectures  to  the 
working  students  of  the  Institute  (which  lectures  were 
also  to  be  heard  by  persons  interested  in  artistic  mat- 
ters), I naturally  felt  the  difficulty  of  a choice  that 
might  meet  two  far  distant  extremes.  I knew  that  any 
subject  might  be  of  use,  not  because  of  the  subject 
itself,  but  because  of  its  necessary  development — the 
explanations  about  it.  These  coming  from  the  reserve 
fund  of  experience,  might  interest  the  student  even  if 
by  no  more  than  quickening  his  perceptions,  encourag- 

4 


FIRST  LECTURE 

ing  him  to  think,  and  still  more  to  live  for  himself.  I 
mean,  to  live  for  that  part  of  him  in  which  he  increases 
his  understanding  of  art,  his  love  for  it,  and  his  judg- 
ment of  how  best  he  can  employ  his  natural  faculties. 
Still  the  question  would  come  up  as  to  what  might  be 
the  more  natural  way  of  addressing  the  student  when  I 
was  not  his  usual  teacher,  when  I could  not  tell  what 
his  antecedents  were,  nor  his  ambitions.  On  asking  a 
younger  man,  a student  whom  I employed,  what  he 
thought  students  might  wish,  he  told  me  that  their 
one  certain  wish  would  be  to  know  “ how  to  get  on.” 
Taking  that  seriously,  it  seemed  to  me  that  a form  of 
discourse  which  should  refer  to  the  works  of  men  who 
must  have  had  the  same  problem  before  them  and  met 
it  in  a special  way,  might  be  a manner  of  explaining 
one’s  experience  by  using  it  to  look  at  the  experience  of 
others.  In  this  particular  case,  if  I wrote  and  spoke 
about  artists  who  had  lived  within  my  own  time,  of 
whom  I absolutely  knew,  whose  life  was  part  of  my 
own,  these  real  stories  would  be  like  the  talk  of  the  older 
professional  man  to  the  younger  about  what  the  men  of 
his  day  were  like,  what  happened  to  them,  and  the 
lessons  of  that  reminiscence  would  come  of  themselves. 
Of  course,  some  of  this  would  fall  by  the  wayside;  but 
part  of  it  would  make  the  works  of  art  by  which  we 

5 


FIRST  LECTURE 


know  the  men  of  my  day  more  natural,  less  accidental 
and  separate,  and  the  younger  man  might  connect  his 
own  beginning  or  experience  with  the  experience  of 
names  that  he  knows  only  as  signatures  or  labels  to 
pictures  hung  on  the  wall,  much  praised  or  much  de- 
bated upon,  and  which,  after  all,  are  no  more  than 
what  he  himself  is  to  rival  or  to  continue. 

If  these  works  of  art  are  recent  he  cannot  help  con- 
sidering them.  They  are  inevitably  built  into  his  memory 
by  the  mere  mechanism  of  his  sight.  Therefore  I have 
chosen  for  the  subject  of  my  talks  some  account  of  the 
lives  of  certain  painters,  whose  effect  on  modern  art  has 
been  so  great  that  no  painter,  no  artist,  can  avoid  hav- 
ing been  influenced  by  them  more  or  less,  whether  he 
knows  it  or  does  not.  I have  restricted  their  number 
so  that  they  might  connect  with  us  more  closely.  The 
experience  of  my  own  life  has  covered  a great  part  of 
theirs.  I have  lived  during  the  period  when  they  were 
discussed,  and  through  their  having  made  their  final 
position,  and  I am,  as  it  were,  a part  of  their  story. 
I am  part  of  the  artistic  public  that  followed  them  with 
interest  and  anxiety.  The  people  I once  knew  fought 
for  them,  or  fought  against  them,  and  I can  go  far 
enough  back  to  have  felt  a personal  triumph  in  their  ob- 
taining their  final  position.  I remember  how  my  old 

6 


FIRST  LECTURE 

friend  William  Hunt,  at  the  end,  in  1868,  after  the 
International  Exposition,  came  up  to  me  and  said: 
“ Well,  our  men  have  won  ” ; Rousseau  and  Corot  and 
Millet  were  at  last  placed,  and  placed  for  good,  and 
with  them  the  others  connected  with  them  by  mutual 
admiration  and  a similar  fate  of  battle  and  final  success. 

The  illusion  of  having  followed  these  men  farther 
back  than  my  own  childish  life  was  very  great.  I had 
known  men  to  whom  all  these  names  were  the  names  of 
beginners.  I had  known  men  who  had  known  the  famous 
Greuze  himself,  had  seen  the  end  of  the  schools  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  and  had  hailed  the  beginning  of 
David  and  the  French  Empire  school  during  the  French 
Revolution,  which  latter  also,  in  large,  was,  as  their 
art  was  in  small,  the  promise  of  a new  era  that  should 
settle  everything.  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds  and  Gains- 
borough were  to  them  what  Rousseau  and  Corot  are  to 
you — people  of  only  a few  years  back.  They  had  seen 
the  beginnings  of  Turner.  They  had  appreciated  Sir 
Thomas  Lawrence  and  seen  him  paint.  This  connection 
with  the  past  made  me  feel  as  if  I,  too,  had  lived  then 
and  gone  through  some  of  their  interest  in  the  promises 
of  the  beginning  of  that  nineteenth  century  which  has 
just  closed. 

Paris  has  usually  some  artistic  civil  war  raging,  rag- 

7 


FIRST  LECTURE 


ing  more  or  less  gently  in  the  world  of  art  and  litera- 
ture. In  the  middle  of  the  fifties,  when  I was  first  there, 
the  names  of  Ingres  and  Delacroix  were  still  a battle- 
field. And  yet  most  of  my  very  young  acquaintances 
among  the  artists  and  art  students  were  untroubled 
by  the  dilemma  of  choice  between  these  two  men  and  the 
ideals  they  represented.  These  younger  men  were  fol- 
lowing new  leaders,  new  names  of  which  a few  were  to 
attain  some  prominence,  but  none  to  represent  the  prob- 
lem in  all  art  symbolized  by  the  two  names  I have  men- 
tioned. 

Courbet  had  made  his  appearance ; Manet  was  known 
to  only  a few  of  us;  Couture  was  one  of  our  teachers, 
occupying  a place  of  his  own,  but  rather  an  uncertain 
one  as  far  as  doctrine  went;  he  was  an  executant,  he 
was  not  an  exponent  of  law.  Millet  was  known  to  but  a 
few  of  us,  and  rather  doubted  by  our  leaders.  They 
could  not  realise  that  his  was  to  be  a universal  fame. 
Corot  was  accepted.  Rousseau  and  Dupre  also,  even 
to  some  degree  by  men  who  disliked  them  and  whom 
they  disliked.  Diaz  was  the  fashion,  a pet  for  almost 
all  the  differing  schools.  Men  who  thought  Rousseau 
stupid,  heavy,  inartistic,  could  tell  me  that  they  recog- 
nised in  Diaz  a real  artist  compared  to  the  bigger  man, 
and  those  who  told  me  that  were  among  our  teachers. 

8 


FIRST  LECTURE 


Gerome,  now  a patriarch,  was  a young  man,  full  of 
purpose,  destined  to  reinforce  academic  training  in 
methods  and  subjects  which  the  academy  had  never 
dreamed  of  and  would  have  objected  to. 

Many  of  these  whom  I have  mentioned  as  accepted — • 
more  or  less — “arrived”  as  the  French  call  it — were  not, 
however,  quite  suited  to  the  sacred  places  in  the  Holy 
Church  of  the  Academy.  Their  names,  with  the  one 
exception  of  the  promising  disciple,  Gerome,  were  con- 
sidered as  accidents,  as  temporary  flashes,  as  slight 
tricklings  outside  of  the  strict  embankments  of  that 
majestic  canal  built  by  academic  art  in  France. 

My  fate  was  thrown  in  both  camps,  which  is  one  of 
the  reasons  of  my  having  the  confidence  of  addressing 
you  with  considerable  certainty,  and  a certainty  from 
my  earliest  youth.  I was  with  my  student  friends  who 
had  their  special  new  admirations,  and  with  my  older 
acquaintances  who  preached  the  more  arid  doctrine  of 
the  school.  And  there  were  some  of  these  last  who  con- 
sidered that  even  the  rigid  teachings  of  the  Academy 
were  but  a manner  of  feeding  the  young  with  easier 
doctrine.  They  recalled  the  glorious  days  of  the  passage 
from  the  eighteenth  century  to  the  nineteenth  when, 
amid  the  trumpets  of  battle  and  the  establishment  of 
new  formulae  of  government,  the  great  David  had 

9 


FIRST  LECTURE 


placed  the  limits  of  classic  art  in  a way  suited  to  the 
French  intellect.  To  them  even  M.  Ingres  had  a little 
of  a poetic  and  sentimental  turn.  We  younger  men 
thought  him  rather  dry,  and  they  thought  him  too 
much  influenced  by  the  gentle  genius  of  Raphael,  whose 
works  could  not  be  packed  within  a rigid  enough  in- 
struction, within  a facility  of  teaching,  within  an  easy 
formula,  within  a doctrine  of  “ no  mistake.”  They  still 
retained  a kindly  trust  in  the  later  Italians,  in  Guido 
for  instance,  in  the  men  who  represented  the  “ perfec- 
tion ” of  art,  that  is  to  say,  an  art  which  had  no  mis- 
takes, as  it  had,  perhaps,  not  too  much  sympathy.  We 
to-day  have  gone  so  far  from  these  perfect  artists  that 
we  are  oblivious  of  them;  we  are  unjust;  we  do  not 
know  them. 

There  was  no  one  artist  at  that  moment  to  carry  out 
with  sufficient  authority  these  more  ancient  ideas. 
Therefore  my  ancient  friends  accepted  the  academic 
teaching,  such  as  it  was,  and  as  expounded  by  M. 
Ingres,  who  is  on  record  as  not  liking  it  himself,  and 
by  M.  Flandrin,  for  one.  There  had  been  great  war 
between  the  so-called  Romantic  school  and  the  so-called 
Classical  school,  and  the  survivors  seemed  to  be  repre- 
sented by  the  two  names  of  Ingres  and  Delacroix.  A 
singular  intellectual  good  fortune  allowed  me,  a looker- 

10 


FIRST  LECTURE 

on  in  Paris,  slightly  interested  in  art,  to  find  one  little 
nook,  a place  where  a debate  concerning  these  two 
names  was  centred  in  one  man.  This  man  was  to  appear 
for  a moment  in  the  character  of  a student,  and  a 
follower  of  both  sides,  was  to  bloom  for  a short  moment, 
to  be  a mere  promise,  to  represent  the  past,  a good  deal 
of  the  future  which  he  might  be  thought  not  to  be 
dreaming  of,  and  then  to  die  suddenly,  and  to  be  almost 
forgotten.  You  will  see  how  far  forgotten.  I do  not 
know  how  many  of  you  will  recognise  the  name  of  Theo- 
dore Chasseriau.  The  Exposition  of  1900  brought  out 
again  a few  of  his  works,  and  pious  hands  are  reproduc- 
ing as  well  as  possible  the  half  destroyed  paintings  which 
passed  through  the  flames  of  the  Commune.  So  that  a 
tardy  justice  has  brought  him  back  to  the  memory 
of  some,  and  to  the  attention  of  a few. 

As  the  portraits  shown  at  the  Exposition  of  1900 
indicate  his  possession  of  the  manner  and  the  latent 
feeling  of  his  first  master,  Ingres  (who  believed  at  first 
in  the  pupil’s  future,  and  in  his  living  according  to 
proper  tradition),  so  the  paintings  on  the  walls  of  the 
Cour  des  Comptes,  as  well  as  some  of  his  later  smaller 
works,  show  the  acceptance  of  Delacroix  as  a patron, 
and  leader  and  master.  But  not  only  do  they  show  this, 
but  in  the  wall  paintings  we  can  also  see  something 

11 


FIRST  LECTURE 

which  connects  with  Puvis  de  Chavannes  as  he  was  to 
be,  and  even  with  Millet,  only  then  beginning  to  take 
his  later  shape.  So  that  the  paintings  of  Chasseriau,  the 
drawings — the  few  drawings  that  you  may  occasionally 
see — are  prophetic;  they  keep  to  a certain  vein  of 
academic  classical  refinement  and  attention  to  some  side 
of  what  is  called  drawing,  but  they  are  animated  by  a 
certain  poetic  vein  of  imagination  which  was  kindled  by 
Delacroix,  and  here  and  there,  in  certain  arrangements, 
in  certain  figures,  in  a tendency  to  some  simplification, 
one  can  see  the  future  Puvis  de  Chavannes,  and  some- 
thing also  of  the  Millet  who  was  to  come. 

This  was  my  own  supposition,  but  within  these  few 
weeks  I have  learned  more  thoroughly  that  I was  even 
mechanically  correct,  that  Puvis  kept  to  his  death  in 
his  consultation  case,  as  we  might  say,  a certain  number 
of  drawings  and  studies  of  the  Chasseriau  whom  we 
knew,  and  who  was  the  coming  man,  when  Puvis  hesi- 
tated yet  as  to  what  he  should  do.  This  young  man’s 
mind  was  one  of  assimilation.  If  one  can  use  so  great  an 
example,  there  was  something  in  him  of  the  young 
Raphael,  taking  naturally  to  each  new  possibility  sug- 
gested by  some  other  artist’s  work.  My  conversations 
with  him  were  few.  I was  a youngster  talking  to  the 
coming  man.  Neither  could  I have  had  any  more;  he 

12 


FIRST  LECTURE 

was  within  a short  space  of  unexpected  death.  But  the 
influence  of  his  admiration  for  Delacroix,  mingled  with 
a respectful  and  calmer  appreciation  of  Ingres,  his 
master,  has  always  remained  with  me  as  a reasonable 
motive,  carefully  considered  and  sufficiently  vital  to  be 
of  use  in  intellectual  criticism,  and  in  that  manner  feed- 
ing the  flame  of  the  torch  which  we  artists  hand  from 
one  to  the  other. 

Chasseriau  had  upon  the  younger  mind,  the  advan- 
tage of  being  able  to  impress  the  lesson  that  technique 
was  not  all  that  there  was  in  study,  and  especially  that 
one  technique  served,  or  might  serve,  as  a substratum 
of  another  very  different.  His  example  was  there  to 
show  this,  and  his  talk  about  Delacroix  made  the  value 
of  that  great  painter  clearer. 

At  that  moment  the  turn  of  the  tide  was  just  going 
against  this  great  painter.  Three  years  later  the  exposi- 
tion of  a series  of  his  paintings  was  to  be  the  strengthen- 
ing of  a small  number  of  his  friends,  and  the  source  of 
a series  of  attacks  and  depreciations  which  upon  the 
younger  men  have  left  lasting  traces.  Delacroix  was 
then  getting  older,  though  in  the  full  maturity  of  his 
talent,  which  never  weakened  until  the  day  of  his  death, 
only  a few  years  later — 1864. 

He  was  a solitary  man,  with  no  equals  for  com- 

13 


FIRST  LECTURE 


panions.  He  was  known  to  the  younger  men  at  a great 
distance.  His  studio  was  open  to  anyone  who  wished  to 
call,  if  they  were  students.  Those  who  called  for  other 
motives  he  cared  not  for.  Notwithstanding,  we  all  felt  a 
veil  of  something  between  us  and  him,  and  few  of  us 
had  the  courage  to  do  more  than  occasionally  present 
our  respects.  He  was  supposed  to  be  well  off  by  us 
young  students,  those  of  us  who  did  not  know,  who  had 
no  personal  means  of  knowing.  After  a lifetime  devoted 
to  his  art  all  that  he  had  managed  to  put  aside  was 
something  like  a few  thousand  dollars,  while  his  fame 
had  reached  throughout  the  whole  of  Europe.  But  his 
absolute  independence  from  the  dealer,  from  the  shop- 
keeper, from  anything  that  could  in  any  way  push 
him,  was  such  that  the  natural  suggestion  came  up, 
“ This  man,  to  be  so  independent,  is  so  because  he  needs 
nothing.”  And  among  us  younger  people,  who  did  not 
know,  there  was  this  tradition.  I on  my  part  knew  other- 
wise, but  it  was  impossible  to  convince  any  of  my  young 
friends  that  this  man  was  a poor  man,  working  just  as 
they  did,  notwithstanding  his  fame. 

From  inherited  habits  he  appeared,  and  rather  liked 
to  appear  occasionally,  in  what  is  strictly  called 
“ society,”  and  he  was  known  to  all  that  were  distin- 
guished in  literature,  science,  and  art.  Even  such  a thing 

14 


FIRST  LECTURE 

as  a royal  visitor  from  some  foreign  country  came  to 
him  occasionally.  But  for  all  that  he  was  still  a man 
of  moods,  who  preferred  the  possession  of  himself  to  that 
of  any  others.  So  that  the  young  did  not  know  him,  as 
I say,  and  his  appearance  in  the  sittings  of  the  Institute 
in  one  of  his  new  relations  to  the  academic  powers, 
tested  him  and  marked  him  as  a man  not  to  be  ignored, 
of  an  intelligence  that  must  be  influential,  absolutely 
independent,  and  consequently  dangerous,  and  though 
a just  man  and  a humourous  man  he  liked  them  not. 

Thus  on  his  death-bed  he  submitted  ironically  to  a 
formal  visit  from  the  Institute,  or  the  gentlemen  repre- 
senting it,  and  representing  different  forms  of  science, 
art,  and  literature,  remarking  when  his  visitors  had  left, 
“ Have  not  these  people  made  me  suffer  enough  al- 
ready ? ” 

Long  before,  in  the  interrupted  journal  which  he 
kept  through  much  of  his  life,  we  find  the  young  man’s 
wish  expressed,  far  back  at  the  very  beginning,  “ Never 
to  belong  to  any  of  those  trades  of  humbug  which  in- 
fluence the  human  race.”  The  secret  of  his  career  is  all 
in  this  expression,  which  explains  the  independence  of 
feeling  that  persists  in  all  his  work,  which  makes  it 
charming  when  you  feel  like  it,  which  is  at  times  dis- 
agreeable, though  not  repulsive,  when  out  of  one’s 


15 


FIRST  LECTURE 


ordinary  vein.  He  was  passionately  absorbed  in  one  idea 
alone,  the  pursuit  of  art  as  a freedom  from  forms  of 
intellectual  slavery,  and  as  allowing  him  to  keep  full 
possession  of  himself.  Naturally  that  feeling  expressed 
in  his  works  met — I almost  guessed  at  it  already  in  my 
own  experience — sometimes  sympathy  and  sometimes 
the  reverse.  I know  of  no  artist  with  whose  mood  one 
must  happen  to  fall  in  so  distinctly  as  with  his.  Of 
course  there  is  the  succession  or  continuation,  of  ad- 
mirable colour  and  proud  composition,  but  the  picture 
is  the  expression  of  the  mood ; and  the  dramatic  form 
which  he  liked  and  which  had  the  shape  of  his  time  is  so 
much  the  realisation  of  this  personal  impression  that 
one  does  not  always  follow  him. 

Already  had  begun — and  the  siege  had  been  laid  long 
ago  by  the  pupils  of  the  great  Raphael,  continued 
through  the  majestic  art  of  a few  of  the  great  French 
masters  by  the  schools  and  the  literary  teaching  of  the 
eighteenth  century — already  had  been  laid  out  the  pro- 
gramme of  what  we  have  to-day,  so  that  we  can  hardly 
break  away  from  it,  we  can  hardly  think  without  it — the 
representation  of  the  picture  as  a set  scene,  as  a thing 
in  the  theatre,  as  a thing  carefully  composed  in  the  way 
that  it  will  look  best,  in  which  the  light  will  fall  in  a 
certain  way  on  the  main  actor,  and  in  a less  important 

16 


CHASSERIAU:  “THE  ROMAN  BATH’- 


CHASSERIAU 

PORTRAIT  OF  HIS  TWO  SISTERS 


Ph 

£ s 

O H 

M £ 

O K O 

72  << 

H O 

hh 

P3  Ph  H 

w 

<3  Ph 

O 

O - 

CHASSERIAU 

“ PEACE  ” (Fragment) 

FORMERLY  IN  THE  COUR  DES  COMPTES,  NOW  IN  THE  LOUVRE 


THE  BARQUE 
OF  DANTE” 


H 

« 

> 

E3 

O 

a 

E 

Eh 


MANET  BRACQUEMOND  DE  BALLEROY 


FIRST  LECTURE 


way  on  the  others,  in  which  everybody  shall  have  a 
place,  in  which  nothing  shall  be  unsettled,  in  which 
nothing  shall  be  accidental,  contrariwise  to  what  hap- 
pens in  real  life.  Now  with  Delacroix  the  influence  of 
the  great  master,  of  the  very  great  master,  Rubens, 
which  was  upon  him,  his  own  personal  nature,  his  ab- 
sorption of  the  modern  literature  of  other  nations  at 
that  time  richer  than  his  own,  of  Byron,  Goethe — who 
were  far  from  the  set  forms  of  the  rather  narrow  France 
of  his  day — his  love  of  Shakespeare,  all  these  influences 
moulded  his  view  of  the  idea  of  the  picture.  Moreover 
he  saw  the  picture  before  he  painted  it,  before  he  com- 
posed it.  It  dropped  upon  him  as  the  sights  that  you 
see  drop  upon  you.  For  example,  as  the  fire  that  I saw 
to-day — the  groups,  all  necessary,  because  some  of  them 
were  doing  something  and  attending  to  it,  and  others 
were  doing  nothing,  and  contradicted  what  ought  to 
have  been  (and  would  have  been  in  the  modern  view  of 
painting)  a set  scene,  with  nobody  contradicting  the 
real  meaning  of  it.  On  the  contrary,  in  the  real  fact, 
three-quarters  of  all  the  people  I saw  had  really  nothing 
to  do  with  it.  They  were  either  curious  chance  lookers- 
on,  or  were  trying  to  help  when  they  should  not  have 
helped ; they  were  doing  everything  that  was  against 
the  composition  of  the  modern  picture;  hence  curves 

17 


FIRST  LECTURE 


of  the  most  enchanting  beauty  crossed  the  necessarily 
strict  line  of  the  horses  and  the  firemen  and  whatever 
was  necessary  to  do  the  business.  And  I could  not  help 
thinking  that  here  was  a sufficient  proof  of  another 
variety  of  sight,  not  the  so-called  academic,  not  the 
correct  so-called  “ classical,”  commonplace,  school-boy 
composition. 

Now  further  than  that,  this  man,  Delacroix,  acted 
the  story  for  himself,  for  the  sensations  he  got  out  of 
it,  for  beauty  of  line  and  colour,  very  much  as  a musi- 
cian might. 

This  different  view  of  his  is  recorded  in  his  paintings, 
many  of  which  you  know.  The  famous  ones  at  least  you 
know  by  a photograph  or  a print,  and  some  of  the  less 
important  you  actually  know  by  sight.  Much  of  such 
views  of  the  picture  influenced  also  Millet,  a man  far 
removed  from  Delacroix  in  temperament,  in  religious 
feeling,  in  spiritual  turn,  in  habit  of  life,  in  ironical 
mood.  But  Millet  seeing  Delacroix’s  work  was  struck 
at  once  by  the  fact  that  this  was  not  the  theatre  ar- 
rangement, but  was  the  way  that  happens  in  real  life, 
or  in  the  ancient  forms  of  art  which  we  know  of  as 
the  works  of  the  great  masters.  So  deep  was  this  im- 
pression that  the  theatre  itself  became  distasteful  to 
Millet  through  the  naturalness  of  Delacroix,  who  seems 

18 


FIRST  LECTURE 

to  us  occasionally  unnatural  because  we  have  been 
trained  for  over  a century  in  the  theatre . 

Delacroix  held  himself  subject  to  many  intellectual 
views  which  are  really  classical,  and  he  studied  deeply 
the  ideas,  the  manners,  and  the  circumstances  of  all  the 
forms  of  older  art.  But  that  was  the  substratum  of 
good  sense  and  of  culture  of  the  intellectual  man.  His 
temperament,  on  the  contrary,  was  a passionate  one, 
and  through  that  he  belonged  to  the  class  of  the  very 
great  artists,  of  Rembrandt  and  Rubens,  Tintoretto 
and  Michael  Angelo,  with  whom  the  expression  of  a 
sentiment,  either  of  peace  or  war,  of  sympathy  or  ob- 
jection, is  the  main  stuff  and  fabric,  and  who  make 
their  form  out  of  the  subject  as  they  go  along.  Hence 
also,  like  the  very  few,  as  I have  just  said,  he  is  a 
dramatist.  All  with  him  is  more  or  less  a drama.  Those 
animals,  in  the  two  little  pictures  up-stairs,  that  drink 
are  not  merely  a lion  drinking,  they  are  a beast  lapping 
water ; they  are  the  animal  indulging  itself,  the  animal 
getting  its  necessary  supply;  they  are  Delacroix  re- 
freshing himself  as  he  laps  the  water  through  the  beast. 
He  is  playing  this  action.  It  is  not  the  copy  of  the  beast, 
the  observation  of  a naturalist,  it  is  the  observation  of 
the  higher  division  of  animated  nature,  recognising  in 
the  lower  form  that  side  which  he  can  understand,  and 

19 


FIRST  LECTURE 


clothing  it  in  the  vision  of  the  eye.  Hence  also  as  I have 
been  saying,  like  the  very  few  he  is  a dramatist.  All  with 
him  is  more  or  less  of  a drama,  and  I do  not  mean  by 
that  the  plausible  arrangement  of  the  theatre,  which 
on  the  contrary  is,  as  I have  been  saying,  the  mark  of 
all  that  false  classical  school  which  he  distrusted,  or  dis- 
liked, or  despised,  and  whose  influence  persists  to-day 
in  modern  French  art,  and  in  most  modern  art  every- 
where. These  works,  however  important,  however  the 
make  of  strong  minds  and  good  eyes,  are  not  creations 
from  within.  They  are  agglutinations  of  probabilities 
such  as  the  stage  shows,  such  as  the  manager  arranges, 
with  excellent  actors,  with  fine  voices  and  with  beautiful 
scenery.  So,  as  I was  just  saying,  we  are  not  surprised. 
We  merely  praise  such  a successful  ordering  and  plac- 
ing of  things.  So  we  should  have  done  if  we  had  had  the 
arranging  of  the  world. 

In  the  realities  of  the  world,  on  the  contrary,  we  are 
surprised ; and  sometimes  we  are  disagreeably  surprised. 
Things  turn  out  differently  from  what  we  expected ; ac- 
cidents of  all  kinds  happen  in  shapes  that  we  had  not 
foreseen ; otherwise  they  would  not  surprise  us ; we 
should  be  prepared  and  we  would  almost — as  we  moved 
in  the  outside  world — we  would  almost  applaud.  But 
wdien  an  artist  like  Delacroix  gives  us  Apollo  riding  his 

20 


FIRST  LECTURE 


chariot  and  shooting  the  poisoned  arrows  which  his 
sister  hurriedly  hands  from  the  quiver ; or  Hamlet,  who 
pushes  back  with  his  foot  the  dead  Polonius ; or  Faust, 
who  having  killed  Margaret’s  brother  by  the  hand  of 
Mephistopheles,  passes  into  the  shadow  of  the  narrow 
German  street,  we  are  surprised — we  did  not  expect 
that;  and  sometimes  it  is  disagreeable.  This  is  what 
really  happens  in  nature.  This  is  really  accident,  unar- 
ranged by  us.  This  great  breath  of  the  real  world  and 
its  fates  flows  through  all  the  scenes  of  Delacroix’s 
paintings  and  his  drawings.  Therein,  as  I said,  they 
belong  to  the  greatest  forms  of  art,  those  that  we  can- 
not foresee  and  we  cannot  arrange.  And  again,  as  I say, 
they  are  often  unpleasant,  except  for  their  beauty — for 
they  always  have  some  form  of  beauty.  They  are  always 
recognisant  of  the  past  of  art,  of  certain  ancient  for- 
mulae of  art,  of  certain  masses  of  light  and  shade,  of 
certain  arrangements  of  colour,  of  certain  truths  of 
colour. 

With  him  goes  the  tradition  of  the  past  and  of 
beauty  for  itself.  With  Millet,  who  liked  Delacroix  and 
admired  him,  if  the  story  of  the  picture  seems  stronger 
by  omitting  some  beauties  that  might  occur,  Millet 
sacrifices  them  without  hesitation.  The  story  is  to  be 
told  at  all  cost,  and  if  that  story  in  his  mind  is  less  well 


21 


FIRST  LECTURE 


told  from  a point  of  beauty  than  from  a point  of  ab- 
solute truth,  let  it  go,  all  the  better.  With  Delacroix 
never  does  this  happen.  He  is  entirely  free  in  everything 
that  he  does,  yet  keeping  in  mind  the  ancients.  It  may 
be  as  far  back  as  the  Greeks,  it  may  be  Michael  Angelo, 
it  may  be  Raphael,  it  may  be  Rubens,  it  is  always  some- 
thing that  he  feels  behind  him  without  effort.  The  whole 
thing  is  the  result  of  the  ages,  the  expression  of  a very 
highly  cultivated,  intellectual  gentleman.  And  yet  at 
that  moment  began  the  realistic  side  of  the  development 
of  French  art,  the  realistic  side  carried  out  by  some  of 
his  greatest  admirers,  by  the  other  men  of  whom  I shall 
speak,  who,  working  differently,  and  understanding 
differently  and  placing  realism  as  the  first  basis  of  their 
impression,  were  still  in  harmony  with  this  man’s  work 
through  admiration. 

Time,  as  I say,  has  brought  Delacroix’s  name  back 
to  us  at  a moment  of  revolt  against  mechanical  ex- 
cellencies. This  moment  is  a most  singular  one  in  the 
question  of  doubt  as  to  technical  forms.  We  have  every 
form  of  representation  in  our  own  art  of  painting  that 
has  ever  existed,  in  some  shape  or  other.  We  have  for 
years,  for  almost  fifty,  gone  as  the  men  of  the  Renais- 
sance did,  or  tried  to  do,  to  science  to  help  us,  to  steady 
us  in  our  formulae.  We  know  that  the  future  is  coming; 

22 


FIRST  LECTURE 

we  know  that  we  must  hold  on  to  the  past,  but  the 
nineteenth  century  has  given  us  bad  habits  of  mechani- 
cal work.  We  have  not  been  in  all  that  century  beautiful 
painters,  as  were  the  commonplace  men  of  a further 
past.  The  very  men  I speak  of,  whose  work  is  wonder- 
ful, whose  work  is  beautiful,  were  still  floundering  in 
the  ordinary  mechanism  of  oil  painting  if  we  compare 
them  to  the  eighteenth-century  men,  Chardin,  Watteau, 
anybody,  it  does  not  matter  who.  So  that,  as  I say,  time 
has  brought  this  name  back  again  to  us  at  a moment  of 
revolt  against  mechanical  excellencies  which  we  do  not 
compass.  The  power  of  the  name  will  exist  even  with 
those  who  do  not  like  him,  and  with  whose  ideas  he  could 
have  no  sympathy.  This  name  is  destined  I think  to  be- 
come still  more  important  as  the  line  of  the  great  suc- 
cessors in  the  realm  of  art  recedes  further  away  from  us. 
Among  them  I think  that  this  one  of  Delacroix  will  re- 
main the  keynote,  the  strongest  expression  of  what  was 
done.  That  does  not  in  any  manner  mean  that  he  will  be 
a clear  teacher — what  is  called  an  easy  teacher.  More- 
over he  belongs  to  that  nineteenth  century  which  flound- 
ered unsuccessfully  but  triumphantly  in  the  use  of 
painting. 

With  this  I close  the  opening  of  my  lectures.  I shall 
repeat  to-morrow  in  another  shape  the  story  of  Dela- 

23 


FIRST  LECTURE 

croix  and  make  some  beginning  of  notice  of  some  of  the 
other  men.  But  I preferred  to  test,  as  it  were,  the  in- 
tention of  what  I am  going  to  do  by  some  consideration 
of  a man  who  will  be  later  a type  of  all  I have  to  say, 
and  whose  name  would  be  one  of  what  the  ancients  called 
good  augury. 


24 


SECOND  LECTURE 


The  subject , Delacroix  the  precursor . The  name  of 
Barbizon  school  a misnomer , an  accidental  grouping  of 
things  with  little  connection.  It  is  a pity  that  this 
name  should  be  continued  by  habit.  It  is  a mere  expres- 
sion of  the  fact  that  certain  painters  happen  to  have 
lived  for  a time  within  the  forest  of  Fontainebleauy  find- 
ing there  themes  for  landscape  or  for  parts  of  their 
pictures.  And  they  entertained  for  each  other  great 
admiration  and  liking  and  had  admirations  in  common 
outside.  The  number  of  artists  under  that  title  uncer- 
tain. The  United  States  has  a large  proportion  of 
their  work , and  appreciated  them  early. 

The  romantic , the  emotional , and  the  realistic  tenden- 
cies met  formalisation  in  art  and  were  forced  into  ap- 
parent opposition.  Certain  names  mark  this  beginning : 
Delacroix , Gericault.  They  were  no  innovators.  Impres- 
sion of  their  early  work  on  the  public.  “ The  Wounded 
Cuirassier “ The  Raft  of  the  Medusa Delacroix's 
exotism , the  breath  of  that  moment.  “ The  Massacre 
of  Scio.”  “ The  Women  of  Algiers .”  Subjects  from 
foreign  poetry  and  history.  His  extraordinary  power 
of  absorption  of  the  idea. 


SECOND  LECTURE 


OUR  subject  is  Delacroix,  the  precursor  of  the 
so-called  Barbizon  school,  which  as  you  know 
is  a misnomer,  an  accidental  way  of  grouping  a 
number  of  things  together  that  have  really  not  very 
much  connection.  The  title,  the  name  of  the  Barbizon, 
or  the  Fontainebleau  school,  is  a mere  expression  of 
the  fact  that  certain  of  the  men  whose  names  we  as- 
sociate with  that  title  happened  to  live  for  a short 
time  within  the  great  and  beautiful  forest  of  Fontaine- 
bleau, and  found  therein  sufficient  themes  for  landscapes 
or  for  those  parts  of  their  pictures  that  needed  a land- 
scape motive.  The  exact  number  of  these  men  whom  we 
should  bring  together  under  that  title  is  also  an  un- 
certain and  a fluctuating  matter.  Probably  I shall  drop 
half  of  those  who  may  fairly  go  in  under  the  name.  As 
you  all  know  perhaps,  the  United  States  has  a very 
large  proportion  of  their  work,  to  the  credit  of  our 
country,  which  is  supposed  to  be  and  is  I suppose,  and 
I hope  will  always  consider  itself,  a barbaric  country, 

27 


SECOND  LECTURE 

because  there  is  no  greater  protection  than  ambition  for 
to-morrow.  To  our  great  credit  we  were  also  among  the 
early  admirers  of  this  school  which  triumphed  later  in 
France.  Millet  was  acknowledged  here  before  he  was 
really  known  over  there,  and  Millet  certainly  met  his 
first  great  encouragement  through  Americans.  As  I 
said,  the  exact  number  of  these  artists  is  a question  of 
fluctuation.  Their  ideas,  their  temperaments,  happen 
to  be  very  diverse,  and  perhaps  even  in  certain  ways 
contradictory ; their  origin,  that  is  to  say  the  way  they 
came  to  live  at  a certain  moment  under  certain  circum- 
stances and  certain  influences,  is  not  separable  from  the 
great  movement  of  which  they  are  the  results,  even  when 
they  contradict  it.  That  great  movement  is  a wave  of 
the  history  of  the  world — the  stormy  settling  of  the 
waters  after  the  French  Revolution  and  the  spread  of 
its  effects  through  the  wars  of  Napoleon.  The  arts  of 
peace,  which  had  little  free  expression  during  the  polit- 
ical and  military  spasms  preceding  the  settlement  of 
the  Napoleonic  wars,  showed  upon  their  revival  the 
moral  and  intellectual  effects  of  the  storm  already 
marked  in  social  and  political  changes.  New  ideas  had 
been  accepted ; old  ones  had  faded  away ; and  against  the 
new  ideas  arose  the  natural  reaction  that  accompanies 
revolutions.  The  desire  for  passionate  self-expression, 

28 


SECOND  LECTURE 


forced  upon  the  mind  by  the  openings  of  new  gates 
of  thought,  brought  up  also  a desire  for  peace,  and 
reasonableness  and  ready  adjustment.  We  must  remem- 
ber that  in  France  the  revolution,  through  its  settling, 
through  its  formalisation  by  the  influences  about  Na- 
poleon, produced  a more  logical  and  consequently  a less 
flexible,  less  human  arrangement  of  society  than  had 
existed  before.  All  was  done  rapidly,  so  as  to  meet  the 
question  of  the  necessary  hurry.  Innumerable  things  of 
beauty  and  goodness  were  put  aside  because  they  did 
not  fit  at  once. 

The  story  of  this  romantic  and  emotional  and  realis- 
tic school  is  associated  with  this  difficulty.  They  met 
not  a helping,  but  a tyrannical  formalisation  of  art, 
meant  for  the  good  of  a general  public,  but  which  to 
their  independence  was  disastrous.  Their  forced  op- 
position to  the  great  school,  the  great  government 
school,  is  the  constant  thread  that  unites  all  these  men 
together. 

In  the  arts  which  most  reflect  the  aspirations  of  men, 
there  came,  beside  the  expression  of  passion,  of  doubt,  of 
interest  in  all  forms  of  movement,  a special  admiration 
of  what  is  outside  of  man’s  agonies  and  anxieties — the 
peace  and  beauty  and  harmony  of  nature.  The  melan- 
choly born  of  failure  in  fitting  the  issues  of  the  world 

29 


SECOND  LECTURE 


to  one’s  own  desires  turns  naturally  into  the  con- 
templation of  that  over  which  we  have  no  control — that 
nature  which  continues  undisturbed  by  the  vicissitudes 
of  man.  So  that  the  protests  of  Shelley  and  of  Byron 
coincide  with  the  contemplation  of  Wordsworth  and  the 
detachment  of  Goethe;  and  in  France  the  doubt  of  De 
Vigny,  the  agitation  of  Chateaubriand,  merge  into  the 
melancholy  of  Lamartine,  the  questionings  and  poetic 
anxieties  of  De  Musset,  and  the  pictorial  and  exotic 
wordings  of  Victor  Hugo,  which  belong  to  the  same 
period  as  George  Sand’s  description  of  pastoral  regen- 
eration. 

In  France  more  than  anywhere  else  the  art  of  paint- 
ing showed  the  same  rhythm  of  diverse  tendencies.  The 
official  management  of  art  had  been  established  under 
Napoleon  and  continues  to  this  day ; but  its  steady 
reign  began  to  be  attacked  as  soon  almost  as  the  Na- 
poleonic era  closed.  As  often  happens,  the  great  leaders 
of  the  opposition  had  no  desire  to  make  a protest ; they 
only  asked  to  be  let  alone  by  the  police  of  art.  They 
were  merely  expressing  themselves  and  their  likings ; 
likings  the  result  of  real  surroundings,  and  not  of  aca- 
demic influences  ; results  also  of  another  form  of  the  past, 
that  is  to  say,  the  past  of  the  entire  world,  with  which 
they  were  beginning  to  be  familiar,  and  not  the  academic 

30 


SECOND  LECTURE 

past,  which  was  only  a few  years  old,  perhaps  some 
fifty  years  old  at  most. 

Some  of  these  men  had  seen  much  outside.  For  a short 
time  during  the  Napoleonic  reign,  during  part  of  the 
Napoleonic  triumph,  they  had  the  spoils  of  the  world 
of  art  in  Paris.  They  had  very  many  of  the  great  paint- 
ings ; they  had  much  we  go  to  see  now  in  different  places 
all  brought  together.  Englishmen,  English  artists  came 
there  to  see  them;  our  Allston  was  there  and  got  the 
benefit  of  all  that.  Travellers  were  saved  all  delay  and 
difficulties  as  well  as  expense,  and  a general  idea  of  the 
past  was  brought  to  these  Frenchmen  at  the  time  that 
the  Academy  was  formalising  something  based  only  on 
a small  section  of  the  past.  Our  artists  thus  became 
revolutionary,  under  the  influences  of  their  many  ances- 
tors. What  they  were  really  protesting  for  was  a regard 
for  the  men  before  them,  whom  we  recognise  and  admire 
so  much  to-day,  from  Velasquez  and  Rembrandt  to 
Watteau  and  Chardin.  They  were  not  trying  to  do  any- 
thing new,  they  were  simply  trying  to  keep  up  the  old 
tradition  which  has  never  ceased  so  far  as  we  know,  from 
the  beginning,  from  the  very  beginning  of  painting, 
from  anything  done  by  the  Egyptian,  or  before  the 
Egyptian.  And  yet — so  true  is  it  that  revolutionary 
may  merely  mean  some  form  of  change  from  what  is 

31 


SECOND  LECTUBE 

an  oppression — the  famous  Gericault,  who  left  but  a 
few  fragments,  began  quite  unintentionally  to  paint  in  a 
manner  which  involved  great  difficulties,  consequently 
more  emotion,  so  that  the  official  school,  being  the  gov- 
ernment institution  as  it  is  to-day,  felt  the  danger  of 
everything  not  compassed  by  its  own  scholars.  Almost 
every  man  seemed  to  have  something  to  say  against 
what  might  be  the  teaching  or  example  of  the  official 
school,  and  that  apparently  without  any  special  inten- 
tion of  opposition.  Many  of  the  names  are  of  little  im- 
portance to-day,  but  one  or  two  remain  that  cannot  be 
passed  over,  and  they  make  a beginning  of  the  men  of 
whom  I speak. 

Foremost  of  these  is  Delacroix,  around  whose  name, 
often  to  his  annoyance,  clustered  much  of  the  opposition 
to  the  narrowness  of  the  government  teaching,  as  well 
as  the  enthusiasm  of  all  who  had  either  something  to 
say  of  art  in  any  form  or  tried  to  think  they  had.  With 
him  begins  the  list  of  the  men  who  so  affected  French 
art  that  no  artist  anywhere  to-day  has  escaped  the 
results  of  their  individual  efforts. 

This  moment  of  very  great  flowering  of  French  art, 
coming  as  such  flowerings  do  upon  the  peace  after 
war,  found  England  in  a lulled  condition ; the  only 
remnant  of  its  ambitions  in  painting  being  Turner,  who 

32 


SECOND  LECTURE 


was  trying  to  do  something  new  after  what  he  had  al- 
ready done ; and  a few  very  remarkable  and  most  intelli- 
gent painters  of  society,  purely  of  society,  representing 
a narrow  view  of  human  nature — -Thomas  Lawrence,  for 
instance,  beautiful,  but  with  no  emotion,  no  danger,  no 
difficulty,  no  great  anxiety  about  the  problems  of  man- 
kind. Blake  was  unknown  and  dying.  There  was  nothing 
in  Italy,  nothing  in  Holland.  In  Germany  a movement 
was  beginning  which  ended  in  a dramatic  formulation 
on  one  side  and  a form  of  religiosity  in  art  on  the 
other.  All  that  is  absolutely  in  the  past. 

Delacroix  is  himself  a difficult  man  to  define,  being  as 
complex  as  the  nineteenth  century,  whose  middle  period 
is  covered  by  his  life.  Born,  I think,  in  1798,  he  died 
in  1861.  The  old  Latin  formula  that  man  is  double 
( homo  duplex)  is  not  only  true  enough,  but  man  has 
even  more  varieties  of  himself  than  the  adage  gives  him. 
We  happen  to  know  to-day  quite  well  the  interior  mind 
of  this  painter  of  dramatic  expression,  who  was,  when  he 
worked,  carried  away  by  emotion.  We  have  his  letters, 
his  journals,  or  notes  of  thought  and  work,  covering 
some  forty  years,  and  meant  for  himself  alone.  Therein 
he  appears  as  a man  of  calm,  judicial  view, with  a percep- 
tion of  subtle  origins  in  art  quite  equal  to  those  of  any 
metaphysical  analyst  of  his  time.  He  judged  his  work 

33 


SECOND  LECTURE 


when  done  with  a severity  tempered  only  by  comparison 
with  the  work  of  others.  Although  he  understood  well 
that  the  methods  of  painting,  or  of  any  art,  are  not  an 
end  in  themselves,  he  made  studies  of  light  and  colour 
which  began  the  series  of  modern  attempts  in  that  direc- 
tion, and  though  an  innovator  to  the  public,  he  was  a 
firm  believer  in  all  the  great  principles  of  the  past,  and 
an  admirer  of  all  classical  beauty.  But,  like  all  the 
higher  men,  he  tried  to  express  what  he  wished  to  say 
in  terms  of  himself  and  of  his  own  temperament. 

The  difference  between  Delacroix,  along  with  the 
artists  of  whom  I shall  speak,  and  the  academic  teach- 
ers, the  government  painters,  the  French  Institute  and 
the  44  Beaux- Arts,”  was  that  these  newer  men  who  were 
to  affect  the  whole  of  modern  art  did  not  include  the 
professors  of  the  44  Beaux-Arts 99  among  the  great 
masters  of  the  past,  while  the  professors  of  the  44  Beaux- 
Arts  99  and  members  of  the  Institute  wished  to  be  looked 
upon  as  the  old  masters  themselves.  The  struggle  is  the 
same  as  that  with  all  teaching  bodies,  and  is  merely 
one  of  the  sad  sides  of  human  development.  The  story 
of  such  struggles  is  not  different  from  the  stories  of  the 
difficulties  of  the  saints  who  are  opposed  by  the  official 
church  and  are  thwarted  and  hindered  until  the  day 
comes  when  they  are  put  upon  the  altar. 

34 


SECOND  LECTURE 

The  story  of  these  men  is  similar.  They  have  not 
taught  anything  different  from  what  has  always  been 
taught,  but  their  special  teaching  was  impossible  to  the 
average.  It  was  simply  this,  “ To  thine  own  self  be 
true,”  which  law  demands  a personal  existence  and  a 
personal  value,  that  most  of  us  are  unwilling  to  dis- 
engage so  long  as  we  can  use  the  opinions  and  the 
manners  of  others  as  being  more  acceptable  for  pres- 
ent success.  What  Delacroix  and  the  men  a little  later 
than  himself  did  was  to  kindle  the  flame,  or  keep  it 
burning. 

Delacroix  had  been  a companion,  and  to  some  extent 
a fellow-student,  of  Gericault,  who  begins  the  life  of 
modern  French  art,  outside  the  strict  lines  of  the  Insti- 
tute, at  the  date  of  1820.  Gericault  was  not  unfavour- 
ably looked  upon  by  many  men  who  wrote  about  art  at 
that  time.  They  felt  in  the  great  work  of  Gericault  a 
certain  connection,  and  also  it  must  be  told,  a certain 
theatrical  tendency,  a certain  malice  prepense,  in  think- 
ing of  his  subject  beforehand,  which  connected  with  the 
teaching  of  the  school. 

The  two  young  men — for  Delacroix  was  then  twenty- 
two  years  old — (in  1820),  belonged  to  the  higher  classes 
of  society  and  dropped  into  the  practice  of  art  from  the 
liking  of  the  amateur.  Delacroix  was  attracted  to  art 

35 


SECOND  LECTURE 


through  the  paintings  of  the  maturer  Gericault.  Geri- 
cault  was  for  a time  in  the  Royal  Body  Guard,  and  was 
always  fond  of  the  accomplishments  and  pleasures  that 
a young  man  is  sure  to  indulge  in  when  he  keeps  a cer- 
tain amount  of  social  relation.  He  was  very  fond  of 
horses,  and  he  helped  Delacroix  to  have  a similar  turn 
that  way.  He  also,  and  it  is  quite  a mark  of  what  the 
nineteenth  century  took  upon  itself  immediately  after 
the  Revolution,  he  also  was  fond  of  England  and  Eng- 
lishmen. Both  of  these  young  men  went  over  to  Eng- 
land. They  were,  like  a good  many  Frenchmen,  exceed- 
ingly anxious  to  see  what  this  England  really  was 
against  which  they  had  been  struggling  for  some  twenty 
years.  Already  a beginning  of  romance  and  individ- 
ualism was  associated  with  the  name  of  this  first  pre- 
cursor of  the  Romantic  school,  so  called.  In  1812,  the 
youngster,  only  twenty  years  old,  had  attracted  and 
slightly  shocked  and  had  also  pleased  by  his  first  paint- 
ing— the  famous,  astonishing,  and  singular  picture, 
known  as  the  “ Portrait  of  Mr.  M.,”  which  represents 
an  officer  of  the  Imperial  Guards  on  horseback,  sup- 
posed to  be  charging.  This  astonishing  work, — whether 
as  we  see  it  to-day  in  the  Louvre  it  bears  out  fully  its 
curious  renown, — is  still  to  be  marked  as  the  first  call 
of  a new  era.  There  is,  of  course,  a something  theatrical 

36 


SECOND  LECTURE 

in  the  canvas,  but  not  in  the  sense  of  a possibly  fixed 
image.  There  was  in  the  young  man  himself  a certain 
fondness  for  show — a certain  ambition  of  display,  with 
the  ease  of  success  which  comes  from  youth  and  fortune, 
social  position,  acquaintance  with  the  elect  of  fashion, 
and,  in  this  case,  a liking  for  the  pretty  side  of  military 
life  as  he  saw  it  among  his  friends.  All  that  is  in  the  pic- 
ture, and  only  a young  man  in  the  first  flush  of  life  could 
have  invented  and  painted  it.  We  have  seen  so  much, 
the  nineteenth  century  has  worked  so  hard  at  the  com- 
prehension and  the  rendering  of  Nature,  the  photo- 
graph has  so  acquainted  us  with  innumerable  facts  and 
variations,  which  our  stupidity  had  never  perceived, 
that  the  once  extreme  novelty  of  this  painting  leaves 
us  to-day  somewhat  uncertain.  Imitations,  suggestions 
from  it  have  gone  on.  We  do  not  recognise  its  birth  in 
love  of  Nature.  But  it  is  really  the  result  of  having  a 
personal  acquaintance  with  the  horse,  of  being  a rider, 
and  of  a distaste  for  the  polite  representation  of  the 
animal  by  the  artists  whom  the  painter  knew.  He  was 
studying  at  the  time  anything  relating  to  the  horse, 
and  all  in  the  vein  of  amusement  and  pleasure.  The  ac- 
cident of  seeing  a horse  rearing,  in  a cloud  of  dust,  at 
some  suburban  fair,  is  translated  by  the  imagination  of 
the  youngster  into  a horse,  charging  and  pulled  up 

37 


SECOND  LECTURE 


suddenly.  From  this  the  youth  of  twenty  created  the 
picture.  It  is  the  picture  of  a horse,  and  the  rider  is 
merely  the  necessary  accompaniment.  The  fact  that  a 
friend  was  willing  to  pose  for  the  head,  for  the  costume, 
is  simply  thrown  in  to  give  assurance  of  some  additional 
facts.  Seen  in  this  way,  we  realise  the  new  departure, 
and  the  reason  of  that  suddenness  of  impression  which 
is  essential  to  the  greater  work  of  art. 

In  his  next  picture, the  “Wounded  Cuirassier  Leaving 
the  Field  of  Battle,”  we  have  again  the  love  and  use  of 
the  horse  as  the  motive.  But  now  a sentimentality,  an  in- 
tention of  lyric  meaning  fills  the  picture,  determines  its 
lines,  and  the  arrangement  of  its  masses.  It  is  not  an 
echo,  but  it  has  the  note  of  the  Byronic  feeling  coeval 
with  it.  The  officer  is  nowr  an  intimate  part  of  the  story 
— perhaps  the  story  itself,  and  Gericault  has  entered 
the  Guards  and  is  wearing  the  uniform  of  the  mus- 
keteers. And  then  he  goes  back  to  study,  and  Italy 
makes  more  and  more  a sculptor  of  him.  Italy  also  frees 
his  mind  through  admiration  of  every  kind.  For  he  is, 
like  Delacroix,  an  admirer ; he  is  not  an  imitator.  All 
that  he  asks  from  the  various  contradictory  admira- 
tions is  the  excitement  and  additional  life  that  we  gain 
through  admiration.  His  personal  influence  may  not 
have  been  perhaps  as  great  at  it  seems  to  us  to-day, 

38 


SECOND  LECTURE 


but  he  opposed  very  strongly  the  official  school,  and  all 
the  more  after  his  having  seen  in  Rome  the  results  of 
the  academic  form  of  teaching.  He  was  opposed  to  all 
government  interference  in  art,  and  to  all  strict  educa- 
tional prisons.  The  school  then  was  more  dogmatic  than 
we  can  quite  understand  to-day.  One  of  the  criticisms 
of  Gericault’s  principal  painting  was  that  it  did  not 
quite  seem  to  be  “ within  the  limits  of  our  school.”  We 
must  remember  that  the  great  M.  Ingres,  whom  my 
youth  and  yours  also,  perhaps,  considered  a severe 
master,  was  once  looked  upon  as  a person  whose  views 
might  be  a little  bit  doubtful,  because  of  a suspicion  of 
independence. 

Some  of  Gericault’s  actual  words  are  worth  quoting. 
One  day,  seeing  a child  scribbling  something  on  a wall, 
he  was  astonished  at  the  boldness  of  the  drawing,  and 
said : “ What  a pity ! The  school  is  going  to  spoil  all 
that.”  He  goes  on  to  say : “ Suppose,  indeed,  that  all 
young  men  in  the  school  are  endowed  with  all  the  qual- 
ities that  make  painters ; isn’t  it  dangerous  to  have  all 
study  together  for  years  and  years,  under  the  same 
influence,  copying  the  same  thing  and  travelling,  you 
may  say,  on  one  road?  How  can  they  have  any  origi- 
nality after  that?  Haven’t  they  exchanged  with  each 
other  any  particular  qualities  which  they  had?  So  it  is 

39 


SECOND  LECTURE 


disgusting  every  year  to  see  the  compositions  of  these 
young  men,  all  painted  quite  correctly  from  end  to  end, 
and  yet  having  nothing  of  their  own.  That  is  because 
having  long  put  aside  their  own  sensations,  none  of 
these  rivals  is  able  to  have  a physiognomy  of  his  own ; 
one  drawing,  one  colour,  one  system  of  drapery,  one  set 
of  gestures,  one  set  of  expressions — all  that  is  the  sad 
result  of  the  school,  comely  in  the  same  way,  inspired 
by  the  same  soul — if,  indeed,  one  can  admit  that  the 
soul  can  still  preserve  any  faculty  and  preside  over 
such  work.” 

That  is,  in  short,  what  Gericault  taught,  and,  to  a 
certain  extent,  practised  in  his  painting.  But  he  was 
not,  in  the  slightest  way,  revolutionary  or  loose-ended. 
He  was  a hard  and  severe  student  upon  the  old  lines, 
and  his  last  and  great  work  shows  what  previous  studies 
he  must  have  made  in  the  direction  of  a severe  view  of 
Nature.  Yet  there  is  something  of  an  appeal  to  the 
public — an  appeal  which  is  still  understood,  for  his  pic- 
ture, either  in  its  original  paint  or  translated  by  engrav- 
ing or  photograph,  has  still  a popularity.  That,  it 
could  hardly  escape,  if  fairly  well  done,  for  the  subject 
is  such  a one  as  appeals  to  all  our  memories  and  sensa- 
tions— the  story  of  castaways  in  the  middle  of  a threat- 
ening ocean,  on  an  insufficient  raft,  discovering  at 

40 


SECOND  LECTURE 

length  a sail  which  may  be  their  salvation.  The  44  Raft 
of  the  Medusa  ” is,  therefore,  a great  historical  paint- 
ing, in  the  sense  that,  besides  its  popular  success,  it  has 
great  professional  qualities  of  respect,  and  study  of 
the  scholarly  and  classical,  and  an  extraordinary  reach- 
ing out  to  the  strongest  realism.  Whatever  might  have 
happened  to  this  remarkable  young  man,  the  most  that 
we  know  is  that  he  made  this  brilliant  mark,  and  in- 
fluenced more  or  less  many  about  him.  The  very  brevity 
of  his  life — cut  off  by  accident — has  helped  to  make  of 
him  all  the  more,  a special  figure.  (He  was  thrown  off 
his  horse,  a fate  quite  in  accordance  with  his  passion 
for  everything  concerning  the  horse.) 

Considering  this  influence,  and  both  the  friendship  or 
friendly  acquaintance  between  Gericault  and  Delacroix, 
it  is  worth  while  comparing  their  first  successes — if, 
indeed,  we  can  use  these  words  for  a success  cut  short 
like  that  of  Gericault’s.  The  first  painting  of  Dela- 
croix’s, 44  The  Barque  of  Dante,”  still  has  a certain 
preoccupation  or  anxiety  for  a rendering  which  shall 
be  in  accordance  with  64  Beaux- Arts  ” tradition.  The 
figures  are  studied,  as  it  were,  separately,  with  some 
anxiety.  Of  course,  the  extraordinary  imagination  of 
the  painter  has  seen  the  thing  altogether,  while  in  the 
great  painting  of  Gericault  one  feels  that  its  existence 


41 


SECOND  LECTURE 


has  been  slowly  evolved  out  of  many  possible  combina- 
tions. It  is  only  very  slowly — this  we  know — that  Geri- 
cault  placed  on  the  empty  barrel  in  the  raft  the  figure, 
the  naked  negro,  who  waves  his  signal  for  relief.  When 
Delacroix  comes  to  paint  his  next  great  picture,  “ The 
Massacre  at  Scio,”  his  mind  is  absolutely  free  from 
the  wish  to  hark  back  to  some  rule — in  fact,  to  paint 
a picture.  He  sees  the  thing  in  his  mind  as  we  do  in 
Nature. 

So  that  the  step  between  these  two  men  is  really  very 
wide.  But  they  must  have  helped  each  other,  especially 
in  their  having  together  visited  England,  and  admired 
the  paintings,  both  of  the  day  itself,  which  was  not  a 
great  one,  and  of  the  men  who  were  just  gone,  the  Rey- 
noldses and  Gainsboroughs,  and  others. 

Reverses  of  fortune  obliged  Delacroix  to  take  to 
painting  as  a means  of  support.  His  father  had  been 
secretary  to  the  Prime  Minister  Turgot  in  the  previous 
century ; a lawyer  in  Parliament ; a deputy  to  the  Con- 
vention; a member  of  the  Council  of  State,  as  in  the 
usual  way  of  parliamentary  men  of  that  day;  then  a 
Minister  of  Foreign  Affairs,  and  Ambassador.  A cer- 
tain disfavour  towards  a name  associated  with  revolu- 
tionary antecedents  may,  later,  have  helped  somewhat 
an  opposition  to  the  son,  our  artist.  His  mother  was 

42 


SECOND  LECTURE 

a daughter  of  the  celebrated  maker  of  furniture,  Oeben, 
and  through  him,  from  that  line,  Delacroix  perhaps 
inherited  a certain  Teutonic  something.  He  was  other- 
wise well  connected,  and  this  influenced  his  life  for 
good  and  bad;  I mean  that  this  insured  his  easy  rela- 
tion with  people  who  were  in  the  foremost  ranks  of 
political  and  social  life.  Educated  in  a manner  suitable 
to  his  prospects,  he  retained  throughout  his  life  a love 
for  literary  culture.  This  marks  his  choice  of  subjects 
and  helps  to  explain  the  familiar  ease  with  which  he 
moves  in  his  representations  of  historical  and  literary 
characters.  He  had  learned  some  English  early,  so  that 
Shakespeare  and  Byron  were  familiar  influences.  In  this 
way  he  came  to  know  something  of  England,  which  he 
visited,  as  you  know,  and  he  became  familiar  at  an  early 
date  with  English  art,  which  he  admired.  He  cared  for 
all  its  best  examples,  even  to  the  later  day  of  the  Pre- 
Raphaelites.  These  he  was  the  first  by  half  a century  to 
praise  before  an  unbelieving  Continental  audience.  A 
certain  liking  for  many  English  institutions  remained 
with  him,  and  perhaps  influenced  his  political  and  social 
ideas,  which  remained  opposed  to  the  loose  democratic 
movement  of  France.  His  father  and  his  father’s  family 
had  moved  in  diplomacy  and  public  life.  They  were 
inside  the  influences  that  moved  their  world,  and  he 

43 


SECOND  LECTURE 


must  have  seen  what  was  going  on,  must  have  seen  back 
of  the  scenery  of  the  theatre.  Not,  however,  that  his 
ideas  were  retrograde.  He  represented,  as  I think  I 
fairly  said,  what  might  come  to  a man  who,  having  a 
great  deal  of  strong,  good  sense,  knowing  the  mis- 
fortunes of  his  country,  its  excessive  anxiety  to  settle 
everything,  had  heard  reasonable  views  expressed  to  him 
by  men  of  affairs  who  knew  and  who  saw.  Then  his  con- 
nection with  England  had  made  him  appreciate  the 
English  manner  that  managed  to  get  along  and  to  get  a 
great  many  things  without  general  theories  of  guidance. 
Delacroix  was  fond  of  music  and  retained  its  love 
through  life,  and  it  was  this  slight  matter  which  deter- 
mined, as  we  may  see  later,  his  admission  into  the  Insti- 
tute, at  a time  when  painters  and  sculptors  in  the  gov- 
ernment positions  were  all  against  him.  He  had  thought 
of  entering  the  army,  in  which  were  most  of  his  family, 
his  brother  being  a general. 

He  was  helped  in  his  first  beginnings  by  Gericault, 
who  found  living  work  for  him ; and  almost  at  once,  in 
1822,  his  first  great  picture  of  “ Dante  and  Virgil 
Crossing  the  Infernal  Lake  ” drew  the  attention  of  the 
public,  of  critics,  of  people  of  fashion,  of  all  the  literary 
men,  to  the  promise  of  extraordinary  talent.  The  suc- 
cess was  ahnost  too  great,  and  opinions  divided.  Great 


44 


SECOND  LECTURE 

praise  was  met  by  objections  which  seem  to  us  to-day  a 
condemnation  of  the  critics  who  opposed.  He  was  espe- 
cially blamed  for  the  greatest  of  all  qualities  that  can 
be  found  in  any  work  of  art;  to  quote  the  exact  words 
of  the  most  important  authority  who  arraigned  him: 
“ He  had  combined  all  the  parts  of  his  work  in  view  of 
one  emotion.”  This  phrase  is  perhaps  the  best  definition 
of  what  any  judicious  mind  would  choose  for  an  ex- 
planation of  the  superior  work  of  art.  It  may  be  said, 
in  fact,  that  this  is  all  there  is  in  any  very  great  work 
of  art.  But  it  was  not  what  the  school  taught,  and  what, 
unfortunately,  schools  are  unable  to  teach,  in  so  far  as 
they  are  merely  trainings  in  the  grammar  of  the  pro- 
fession. Into  those  questions,  the  questions  of  grammar 
and  of  mechanical  execution,  these  greater  questions 
can  only  come  in  by  chance.  And  also  the  weak  have  to 
be  encouraged  even  at  the  expense  of  the  strong,  and 
the  supply  of  teachers  must  remain  limited. 

The  famous  painter  of  that  day,  Gros,  wished  to  take 
Delacroix  with  him,  but  the  young  man  declined  the 
honourable  offer,  notwithstanding  his  admiration  for 
the  older  painter.  He  needed  the  practical  help,  how- 
ever, very  much.  He  was  very  poor,  as  people  are  poor 
who  step  down  from  manners  of  living  which  have  no  re- 
lation to  self-help.  From  economy  he  lodged  in  one 

45 


SECOND  LECTURE 


room,  with  one  of  the  Fieldings,  the  English  painter 
(who  taught  him  the  English  methods  of  water  colour), 
both  living  on  rather  insufficient  food.  For  instance,  they 
saved  up  their  coffee-grounds  to  make  their  coffee  on 
the  following  days,  and  kept  a piece  of  meat  from  which 
they  cut  small  slices  to  be  roasted  in  the  chimney  fire- 
place. Delacroix  was  already  suffering  from  a form  of 
illness  that  persisted  through  life — an  ague — which  at 
times  cut  him  off  absolutely  from  work.  He  therefore 
needed  great  courage  to  stand  by  himself,  and  was 
obliged  to  take  any  small  work  which  might  keep  him 
afloat,  even  to  caricature.  It  was  possible  to  sell  studies 
of  horses,  and  these  days  of  adversity  brought  him  to 
attempt  representations  of  the  horse  which  antedate  by 
half  a century  the  modern  perception  of  the  stages  of 
motion,  which  we  owe  to  the  photograph.  That  which 
to-day  is  a proof  of  his  perception  of  nature  remained 
against  him  for  many  years,  because  the  average  eye 
was  accustomed  to  see  the  horse  represented  according 
to  academic  teaching.  Another  form  of  the  insuccess 
attending  merit  is  the  fact  that  he  was  unable  to  abtain 
the  prize  he  steadily  competed  for  in  the  School  of 
Fine  Arts.  At  the  very  moment  when  he  exhibited 
“ Dante  and  Virgil”  one  of  the  famous  paintings  of 
the  world , he  was  the  last  in  the  competition,  obtaining 

46 


SECOND  LECTURE 

only  the  number  60.  But  this  is  the  continuous  story 
of  the  Roman  prize,  which,  though  excellent  in  its  mean- 
ing, has  usually  merely  provided  a place  for  a favour- 
ite pupil.  Later  we  shall  see  the  great  Millet  told 
by  his  teacher,  Delaroche,  that  he  deserved  the  prize  but 
that  Delaroche  wanted  it  for  another  pupil,  a man 
whom  we  only  know  through  this. 

Under  these  circumstances  Delacroix’s  next  great 
painting,  “ The  Massacre  of  Scio,”  was  produced  and 
exhibited.  The  subject  of  the  famous  painting  was  one 
of  that  moment,  a record  of  the  effect  of  the  news  from 
Greece.  This  is  the  date  of  Lord  Byron  and  of  the 
struggle  of  Greece  for  freedom,  that  moved  the  entire 
civilised  world.  The  painting  is  a lyric,  or  a Byronic 
poem,  and  however  accurate  in  many  exotic  details,  and 
in  its  probability,  was  frankly  meant  as  an  ideal  drama. 
In  this  and  later  we  shall  see  the  extraordinary  percep- 
tion of  Delacroix  in  rendering  exotic  picturesqueness, 
in  which  he  is  the  earliest,  and  perhaps  the  most  suc- 
cessful of  modern  artists. 

One  must  remember  that  this  is  a first  attempt  at 
rendering  the  appearance  of  the  Oriental  man,  and  we 
can  see  how  even  to-day  that  appearance  is  real  and 
living  in  his  work.  Yet  there  was  no  intention  of  mak- 
ing a quite  correct  record ; merely  the  necessity  of  cloth- 

47 


SECOND  LECTURE 


ing  the  subject  in  dress  sufficiently  near  to  probability; 
sufficiently  real  to  appeal  to  the  current  enthusiasm 
for  the  independence  of  Greece.  An  enthusiasm  felt  here 
also  as  our  literature  tells  us.  The  Western  Christian 
world  had  been  stirred  to  its  depths  by  stories  of  the 
cruelties  of  the  Turks  in  their  repression  of  the  Greek 
attempt  at  independence.  This  sympathy  is  part  of  the 
poetic  life  of  England,  as  we  know,  and  in  France  also, 
had  a similar  echo.  There  was  a spirit  of  opposition  to 
government  latent,  and  perhaps  our  painter  may  have 
been  marked  as  meaning  such  opposition  by  his  picture. 
For  both  France  and  England  were  forced  into  help- 
ing Greece  by  accident.  The  public  were  favourable 
to  the  cause.  The  great  painting  then  was  a man- 
ner of  appeal  which  to-day  would  be  too  slow  with  all 
our  changes  of  time  and  space.  But  then  there  was  time 
enough  to  prepare  either  in  words  or  in  painting  some- 
thing that  might  be  still  within  the  news  from  Greece. 
The  exact  story  of  the  massacres  I have  not  looked  up. 

The  accurate  title  of  Delacroix’s  great  painting  is 
“ An  Episode  of  the  Massacres  of  Scio.”  The  title 
makes  a careful  difference,  and  is  worth  remembering 
as  marking  the  special  point  in  this  extremely  impor- 
tant painting.  However  admired,  however  famous,  it  has 
never  received  the  full  appreciation  that  it  deserves,  nor 

48 


SECOND  LECTURE 

are  its  lessons  jet  comprehended  even  in  the  country 
which  has  held  it  so  long,  in  its  most  important  collec- 
tion. However  well  balanced,  however  carefully  com- 
posed as  line,  however  much  of  a unity,  the  painting 
asserts  itself  as  part  only  of  a scene  which  we  do  not  see 
entirely.  We  know  that  outside  of  this  frame,  outside 
this  opening,  more- is  going  on  of  the  same  kind.  We 
are  only  looking  at  a small  fragment,  a small  centre  of 
murder  and  brutality.  The  little  group  of  wounded  men 
and  horrified  women  is  evidently  circled  by  a band  of 
Arnauts,  of  whom  we  only  see  a few,  who  stalk  or  gallop 
around  them,  taking  their  choice  of  victims  for  murder 
or  for  rape.  And  the  mind  of  the  artist  recognises  quite 
well  the  merely  official,  commonplace  cruelty  of  the 
Turkish  victors.  They  are  merely  doing  their  ordinary 
business.  On  the  contrary,  the  victims  give  us,  beyond 
any  representation  that  I have  ever  seen  the  terrible 
story  of  the  varieties  of  agony  endured  by  the  van- 
quished. The  soldier  calmly  waiting  his  turn,  whose 
children  alongside  of  him,  embrace  him  and  each  other 
in  fright;  the  dying  man  resigned  to  fate,  dreamily 
expectant,  his  wife’s  head  on  his  shoulder;  the  dying 
woman  whose  child  hopelessly  pulls  at  her  breast;  the 
mother  attempting  to  save  her  daughter  from  the  Turk 
who  drags  her  away  at  the  tail  of  his  horse ; the  other 

49 


SECOND  LECTURE 


women  awaiting  in  abandoned  sorrow  their  horrible 
fate — all  these  things  were  new  in  the  history  of  art, 
and  have  never  been  equalled  in  their  dramatic  intensity, 
in  the  carefulness  of  the  probabilities  of  each  detail.  All 
that  is  for  the  poetic  thought,  the  historical  apprecia- 
tion, and  the  dramatic  terror  of  the  story. 

For  us,  who  are  students  of  the  art  of  painting,  which 
has  strict  technical  laws  and  variations  of  means,  we 
can  see  how  part  of  this  marvel  of  representation  is  ob- 
tained by  the  form  of  the  composition.  It  is  a reversal 
of  the  usual  baby-form  of  making  an  official  picture, 
which  was  especially  taught  then,  and  which  has  not 
disappeared  from  the  usual  school.  The  centre  of  the 
picture  is  empty.  Our  eyes  take  up  the  incidents  on 
each  side,  so  that  we  naturally  feel  that  the  story,  the 
facts,  are  spread  out  further  than  the  centre,  continu- 
ing indefinitely  around  it,  as  they  do  in  Nature,  which 
is  not  enclosed,  by  a frame  of  perpendicular  and  hori- 
zontal, either  gilded  or  not  gilded.  The  vast  plain  and 
its  details  far  away,  of  people,  and  villages,  and  hills, 
and  the  sea,  give  us  all  the  more  the  sense  of  the  help- 
lessness of  the  little  crowd  gathered  in  this  spot. 

Of  course,  there  are  wonderful  bits  of  painting  in  the 
picture,  and  the  whole  of  it  is  a great  piece  of  colour, 
and  drawing,  and  motion.  And  it  is  worth  noticing  that 

50 


SECOND  LECTURE 

we  have  the  record  of  the  number  of  hours,  and  they  are 
few,  which  were  given  to  the  painting  of  some  of  these 
figures ; notably,  the  half-naked  woman  on  the  right 
dragged  away  by  the  Turkish  horseman.  The  studies,  on 
the  contrary,  were  many  and  long.  There  are  exquisite 
arrangements  of  line,  and  beauties  of  the  melody  of 
painting  which  you  can  see  for  yourselves.  Notice,  for 
instance,  the  extraordinary  arrangement  of  line  which 
brings  within  the  curve  of  the  Turkish  scimetar  the 
agonised  body  and  clutching  arms  of  the  poor  mother, 
trying  to  save  her  daughter.  With  some  of  the  greater 
painters — Rembrandt,  and  Titian,  and  Rubens,  and  with 
Delacroix,  we  do  not  recognise  at  once  the  beautiful 
pattern  and  careful  disposition  of  space  and  line,  be- 
cause all  that  is  covered  by  the  splendour  of  colour,  and 
modelling,  and  realisation  of  Nature,  which  makes  the 
difference  between  a painter  and  a designer  of  pat- 
terns.1 

In  this  picture,  then,  we  have  the  beginning  of  free- 

1 For  some  of  you  who  are  more  especially  students,  it  would  be  worth 
while  to  look  up  some  of  the  publications  of  the  beginning  of  the  last 
century,  which  gave  reproductions  of  pictures  in  outline.  For  the  pur- 
poses of  education  in  the  way  of  appreciation  of  composition  and  decora- 
tive line,  this,  of  course,  is  the  simplest  of  methods.  You  will  be 
surprised  at  seeing  the  qualities  I have  just  mentioned,  in  Rubens  or 
Titian,  in  a manner  quite  free  and  apart  from  the  other  merits  which 
we  all  feel  so  strongly. 


51 


SECOND  LECTURE 

dom  in  our  art,  in  a manner  quite  opposite  to  the  school, 
and  so  subtly  placed  before  us  that  only  the  natural 
enmity  to  nature  entertained  by  academic  training 
could  hesitate  in  its  recognition. 

The  great  painting  was  at  once  admired  and  disliked. 
It  was,  however,  bought  by  the  government,  which  shows 
that  there  was  still  a recognition.  But  many  of  the 
important  painters  were  frightened  and  disconcerted, 
and  with  this  painting  begins  the  long  career  of  opposi- 
tion through  which  our  great  painter  had  to  struggle, 
and  which  has  deprived  France  and  the  world  of  what 
would  have  been  the  greatest  of  all  modern  painting. 
This  went  so  far  that  Delacroix  was  officially  notified, 
three  years  later,  when  he  next  exhibited  the  three  paint- 
ings known  as  the  “ Death  of  Sardanapalus,”  “ Christ  in 
the  Garden,”  and  “ Marino  Faliero,”  that  no  further  en- 
couragement from  official  sources  would  come  to  him. 

The  name  of  Byron  is  connected  with  much  choice 
of  subjects  by  Delacroix.  He  returned  over  and  over 
again  to  dramatic  incidents  from  Byron’s  poems,  as 
well  as  to  stories  from  Shakespeare,  from  Dante,  from 
Goethe,  all  of  which  seems  now  to  us  English-speaking 
people,  quite  naturally  selected.  To  his  own  public,  how- 
ever, they  were  more  or  less  unknown.  Thus  he  did  not 
have  the  enormous  advantage  which  is  held  by  the  choice 


52 


SECOND  LECTURE 


of  a well-known  motive.  Perhaps  he  was  not  quite  aware 
of  his  subjects  being  so  remote  from  ordinary  acquaint- 
ance. He  lived  in  these  poems  and  stories  of  poets  who 
were  little  known  and  unsympathetic  to  his  French 
audience.  Nor  was  it  prepared,  nor  is  it  prepared  to- 
day, for  the  essential  difference  between  the  represen- 
tation of  the  story  by  painting  as  it  was  with  Dela- 
croix and  by  the  theatre.  It  is  impossible  to  think  of 
these  paintings  as  represented  by  any  stage  arrange- 
ment. Theirs  is  no  arrangement  in  which  one  can  take 
out  a part  and  put  in  another,  and  yet  have  an  arrange- 
ment quite  as  good  or  better  than  it  was  before.  This 
fact  of  the  French  not  feeling  the  difference  between 
the  representation  of  the  story  by  painting,  or  by  the 
theatre,  explains  the  opposition  met  by  Delacroix  and 
later  by  Millet. 

As  I told  you  yesterday,  Millet  for  a long  time  could 
not  go  to  the  theatre  after  seeing  the  paintings  of  the 
old  masters,  and  after  seeing  Delacroix’s  especial  form 
of  representation  of  reality  the  theatre  became  more  and 
more  distasteful  to  him.  This  influence  of  the  theatre 
accounts  for  a great  deal  of  the  annoying  posing  of 
French  art.  When  accustomed  to  see  arrangements  that 
are  purely  theatrical,  the  average  mind  is  disturbed  by 
the  sight  of  a scene  as  it  might  really  have  happened, 

53 


SECOND  LECTURE 


and  begins  to  wish  for  anything  that  will  give  assurance 
that  the  story  is  taken  from  art  and  not  from  nature. 
The  mind  distorted  by  convention  cannot  believe  the 
thing  to  be  art  which  looks  accidental.  The  habit  of 
the  theatre,  as  distinguished  from  drama  in  life  or  in 
painting,  admits  the  declamation  and  posing  and  all 
the  varieties  of  untruth  which  fit  the  arrangement  of 
the  stage ; and  this  is  fair  enough  as  far  as  the  necessi- 
ties of  the  theatre  are  considered.  The  effect  of  the 
theatre  fades  away;  there  is  a succession  of  movements 
whose  false  poses  are  not  recorded  once  and  forever,  as 
they  are  in  painting.  The  theatrical  declamation  and 
voice  become  a memory.  How  many  of  us  remember  the 
actors  of  our  youth,  the  great  actors  and  actresses?  I 
have  been  able  to  tell  something  about  great  actors  and 
actresses  to  other  great  ones  who  had  only  heard  of 
them,  but  what  could  this  carry  of  the  originals  ? Paint- 
ing of  course  keeps  a record,  and  therefore  should  be 
true  to  sight  for  another  reason : because  any  falsity 
will  tell  more  and  more  as  time  goes  on.  If  the  declama- 
tion of  the  theatre  hung  in  our  ears  we  should  get  tired. 

It  is  this  special  limit  that  Delacroix,  or  Rembrandt, 
or  Millet,  or  any  of  the  great  dramatic  masters,  never 
passed.  And  it  is  the  extreme  persistence  of  the  theatre 
notion  that  assures  the  unreliability  of  almost  all  French 


5 4 


SECOND  LECTURE 


art  in  representing  stories  from  literature  or  from  the 
past,  and  which  even  affects  and  vitiates  such  careful 
exotic  representations  as  those  of  so  careful  an  artist 
as  Gerome,  for  instance.  But  the  convenience  of  the 
other  view  is  great  by  allowing  the  accuracy  of  a few 
details  to  be  studied  out,  as  on  the  real  stage — to  the 
detriment  of  the  greater  qualities,  it  is  true,  but  to  the 
satisfaction  of  the  unimaginative  man  who  can  exercise 
his  talent  on  the  special  points  of  which  he  has  control. 
Compared  to  the  set  scenes  of  French  painters  of  that 
day,  Delacroix’s  dramas  seemed  to  have  too  much  life 
and  not  to  allow  the  eye  to  fasten  on  each  detail  in  suc- 
cession. The  partisans  of  the  official  school  arrang- 
ments  of  a subject,  planned  according  to  precedent,  re- 
mained enemies  of  our  master  to  the  day  of  his  death; 
and  it  was  only  by  persistent  struggle,  by  the  intense 
admiration  of  a few,  that  Delacroix  was  even  allowed  to 
exhibit  in  the  various  “ Salons  ” of  successive  years  that 
long  series  of  glorious  works  which  have  placed  him 
alone  of  all  the  painters  of  the  nineteenth  century  in 
the  same  line  of  high  expression  which  runs  from  Giotto 
to  Puvis  de  Chavannes. 

Divided  praise  and  blame  therefore  followed  Dela- 
croix from  the  moment  of  his  first  picture  until  his  death 
in  1864.  He  made  a large  number  of  paintings  and 

55 


SECOND  LECTURE 


drawings,  having  been  all  his  life  a great  worker.  In- 
deed, he  found  in  work  itself,  in  the  problems  which  he 
was  obliged  to  solve  — because  his  aim  had  been  the 
representation  of  any  subject  that  interested  him — his 
one  recourse  against  the  pressure  of  an  outside  world 
whose  form  was  in  many  cases  disagreeable  to  him,  and 
for  which  he  had  a most  aristocratic  contempt ; not  the 
contempt  of  the  snob  for  those  under  him,  but  aristo- 
cratic contempt  for  meanness,  vulgarity,  all  the  lower 
forms  of  man,  visible  in  one  form  of  society  as  well  as 
in  another.  Somewhat  a man  of  the  world,  to  appear- 
ances, at  least,  insomuch  that  he  kept  carefully  all  his 
social  relations,  the  notes  of  his  journal,  made  only 
for  himself,  explain  that  he  thoroughly  understood 
the  meanness  of  the  crowd,  the  machinations  of  envy, 
and  asked  for  nothing  more  than  the  consolation 
of  faithful  friendship  and  the  privilege  of  carrying 
out  projects  which  were  always  increasing  in  his  im- 
agination. 

Out  of  his  complete  catalogue  of  works  of  nine  thou- 
sand one  hundred  and  forty  pieces  there  are  eight 
hundred  and  fifty  paintings.  When  urged  in  his  later 
days  to  desist  from  work,  he  answered : “ I have  already 
prepared  in  composition,  ready  to  be  carried  out, 
enough  for  two  lives,  and  as  for  projects  sketched  out, 

56 


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DELACROIX:  “ HELIODORUS  CAST  OUT  OF  THE  TEMPLE  ” 

CHURCH  OF  ST.  SULPICE,  PARIS 
(FROM  THE  ETCHING  BY  greux) 


DELACROIX 

JACOB  WRESTLING  WITH  THE  ANGEL 

CHURCH  OF  ST.  SULPICE,  PARIS 


DELACROIX 

“TOBIAS  AND  THE  ANGEL” 


CHURCH  OP  ST.  SULPICE,  P.4RIS 


SECOND  LECTURE 

I think  I have  enough  for  four  hundred  years’  work.” 
Nor  could  he  have  been  exaggerating,  for  his  special 
mark  is  the  novelty  and  suddenness  of  the  appearance 
of  his  conceptions.  That  one  effort  of  all  great  men, 
to  have  a novel  view,  the  effort  which  justifies  their  right 
to  speak,  seems  as  easy  to  him  as  ordinary  speech.  This 
novelty  and  intensity  of  perception  was  such  that  the 
great  Goethe  said,  on  seeing  Delacroix’s  illustrations  to 
his  own  (Goethe’s)  44  Faust,”  44  Delacroix  has  surpassed 
the  pictures  that  I made  to  myself  of  the  scenes  that 
I wrote  myself,”  And  he  added : 44  The  French  reproach 
him  with  having  too  wild  a rudeness,  but  there  it  is 
most  certainly  in  its  place.”  The  French  to-day  have 
hardly  forgiven  him  yet  for  the  harshness  of  his  render- 
ing of  harsh  subjects,  and  no  one  could  have  been  more 
opposed  by  temperament  and  turn  of  mind  to  the 
commonplace  moment  in  which  his  lot  was  cast. 

Once  he  escaped  from  it  by  an  accident  which  deter- 
mined a great  part  of  his  career,  which  gave  him  new 
and  splendid  motives,  and  showed  him  glories  of  light 
and  colour  unknown  to  his  colder  and  darker  native 
land.  In  1882,  ten  years  after  his  public  beginning,  he 
made  a trip  into  Morocco  with  an  embassy  and  brought 
back  the  studies  for  some  of  his  famous  works ; among 
them  the  44  Algerian  Women  at  Home,”  the  44  Jewish 

57 


SECOND  LECTURE 


Marriage,”  the  “ Mad  Dervishes  of  Tangiers,”  the 
66  Guard  of  the  Sultan,”  and  many,  many  others. 

They  are  the  first  competent  representations  of  that 
Oriental  life  which  lies  along  the  Mediterranean,  and 
they  would  answer  for  most  Mahometan  countries.  Some 
of  them  have  separate  qualities,  astonishingly  different 
from  his  other  and  previous  work. 

It  is  needless  to  say  that  all  through  the  paintings 
and  studies  passes  a current  of  poetic  appreciation  suf- 
ficient to  ennoble  any  subject.  But  what  is  extraordi- 
nary is  the  passage  from  one  form  of  realisation  to  an- 
other. In  this  he  is  the  first  of  the  men  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  and  he  has  begun  for  all  of  us  the  appreciation 
of  different  manners  of  painting  according  to  the  sub- 
ject. In  this  particular  meaning  are  intended  the  ac- 
curate view  of  the  differences  of  place,  which  we  feel  in 
such  a painting  as  his  “ Algerian  Women  in  their 
Room.”  The  sense  of  closed  space,  the  warm  light,  in- 
dicative of  a captive  sunshine,  are  as  beautifully  ob- 
served as  in  the  intimacy  of  any  of  the  Dutch  painters 
of  interiors.  Contrariwise  the  open  air — what  may  be 
called  the  weight  of  the  sunlight  upon  burnous  and 
haick  of  Moorish  warriors  are  again  impressions  of 
open  space,  and  of  light  and  air. 

And  here  again  you  will  notice  the  look  of  momentary 

58 


SECOND  LECTURE 

poise  in  each  figure — the  laziness  of  the  sitting  ones, 
the  movement  of  entrance  of  the  one  who  lifts  the  cur- 
tain as  she  comes  in — all  so  different  from  the  set  photo- 
graphic studio  stability  we  get  even  from  good  artists. 
I say  photographic,  but  each  day  of  improvement  in 
the  art  of  photography  brings  us  nearer  to  a photo- 
graphic rendering  of  the  reality  which  is  movement. 

All  through  his  life  he  returned  at  times  to  these 
reminiscences  that  carried  him  to  a land  where  he  had 
seen  the  external  expression  of  man  in  harmony  with 
man’s  habits  and  surroundings.  Consequently  he  felt 
that  his  ideas  of  art  were  fundamental.  That,  for  in- 
stance, in  this  harmony  of  man  with  nature  was  the  real 
clue  to  the  value  of  our  inheritance  of  the  antique  Greek 
style.  As  with  Rodin,  who  is  a great  example,  as  with 
Rarye,  Delacroix’s  friend,  as  with  the  Greeks,  as  with 
the  greater  men  of  all  time,  except  the  present,  so  Dela- 
croix felt  the  unexpressed  rule  that  the  human  being 
never  moves  free  in  space , but  always,  being  an  animal, 
in  relation  to  the  place  wThere  he  is,  to  the  people  around 
him,  to  innumerable  influences  of  light,  and  air,  wind, 
footing,  and  the  possibility  of  touching  others.  This  is 
the  absolute  contradiction  of  the  studio  painting,  how- 
ever dignified,  where  the  figure  is  free  from  any  inter- 
ruption, and  nobody  will  run  against  it.  And  the  habit 

59 


SECOND  LECTURE 

of  the  studio  has  so  acted  on  modern  art  that  the 
greater  mass  of  even  extraordinary  successes  are  pic- 
tures of  pictures,  and  not  pictures  of  Nature. 

Please  consider  this  the  point  that  I am  making  for 
you.  Were  Mr.  Rodin,  the  sculptor,  here  he  would  tell 
you  how  we  talked  this  secret  over  some  dozen  years  or 
so  ago — a secret  which  he  was  glad  to  find  I had  dis- 
covered as  a principle  of  his  work. 

Delacroix  thus  saw  more  and  more  the  meaning  of 
the  rhythm  of  movement,  and  he  was  also  encouraged  to 
go  more  deeply  into  the  great  questions  of  colour  and 
light  which  were  neglected  by  the  men  of  his  time.  From 
that  moment  these  questions  remained  with  him  a con- 
stant preoccupation  in  everything  that  he  did,  and  so 
his  more  successful  work  separates  from  the  usual 
French  tone  by  a certain  richness  of  appearance.1 

A certain  superiority  was  conceded  to  Delacroix  by 
his  contemporaries,  even  when  inimical  to  him,  in  those 
questions  of  colour  and  of  light.  But  with  the  usual 
jealousy  of  any  great  superiority  they  assumed  that 

1 It  is  a pity  that  because  he,  like  others  of  the  nineteenth  century, 
had  no  good  practical  connection  with  the  past,  and  because  the  pig- 
ments of  that  moment  were  uncertain  and  sophisticated  by  chemists, 
and  because  he  was  poor,  many  of  his  paintings,  in  common  with  those 
of  the  day,  have  been  injured  by  the  changes  of  time.  No  men  have 
suffered  more  than  the  majority  of  the  Barbizon  men  from  the  manner 
in  which  their  paintings  have  changed. 

60 


SECOND  LECTURE 

he  must  have  been  deficient  in  everything  else.  Opposi- 
tion to  him  increased,  preventing  his  obtaining  orders 
for  decorative  work,  for  which  the  qualities  that  his 
enemies  conceded  were  eminently  fitting. 

We  have,  therefore,  but  little  of  him  in  that  direc- 
tion. With  Puvis  de  Chavannes  he  is  the  only  one  of 
the  French  painters  who  has  any  claim  to  connection 
with  the  great  mural  painters  of  the  past.  It  is  to  the 
eternal  disgrace  of  the  government  and  official  influence 
that  Delacroix,  this  one  most  important  exemplar  of 
decorative  art,  had  so  little  opportunity  to  illustrate  his 
nation  by  monumental  work. 

He  was  compelled  to  execute  work  at  a loss  to  himself. 
The  personal  fortune  of  Puvis  de  Chavannes  allowed 
him  to  accept  commissions  at  a loss.  But  for  all  the 
gigantic  work  of  Delacroix,  who  lived  a somewhat  ab- 
stemious life,  spending  on  nothing  but  his  work,  and 
leaving  a fortune  in  paintings , he  had  not  at  his  death 
more  than  a few  thousand  dollars. 

The  great  pieces  of  decorative  work  merely  gave  him 
enough  to  go  on  with.  One  of  them  especially  is  the 
ceiling  in  the  so-called  Gallery  of  Apollo  in  the  Louvre, 
where  form  and  colour  fully  carry  out  the  rich  old 
architectural  forms.  There  the  Greek  myth,  “ The  Tri- 
umph of  the  God  of  Day  over  the  Powers  of  Darkness,” 

61 


SECOND  LECTURE 


is  represented  as  freshly  as  if  the  subject  had  just 
stepped  out  of  the  brain  of  Minerva.  In  no  ancient,  in 
no  modern  work,  is  there  a greater  swing  than  in  the 
charge  of  the  divine  horses,  carrying  Apollo  who  aims 
his  bow,  while  his  sister  supplies  him  with  the  deadly 
arrows.  In  the  paintings  in  the  church  of  Saint  Sulpice 
two  great  wall  spaces  of  rather  gray  surface — showing 
as  well  as  anything  by  Puvis  de  Chavannes  the  careful 
treatment  of  the  wall — represent  the  wrestling  of  Jacob 
with  the  angel,  and  the  driving  of  Heliodorus  from  the 
temple  by  the  angelic  avengers.  In  the  former,  the 
impression  of  a pastoral  scene,  of  the  interruption  of 
travel  in  a great  wooded  country ; in  the  second,  the 
fierce  descent  of  two  angelic  powers  hurled  through  the 
air  at  the  pagan  desecration,  are  the  subjects. 

These  are  late  works,  and  at  that  very  time  especially 
was  Delacroix  most  attacked,  and  yet  the  critics  who 
liked  him  little  were  not  afraid  to  compare  his  work  with 
Raphael’s  on  the  same  subject.  And  it  gives  one  the 
measure  of  the  importance  of  this  man  that  the  com- 
parison is  necessary,  that  it  can  be  made  with  no  one 
else,  and  that  in  some  ways  he  animates  the  main  figures 
with  a larger  feeling.  That  alone,  in  fact,  ranks  Dela- 
croix beyond  all  modern  men  in  the  great  question  of 
style  and  the  grasp  of  the  meaning  of  a subject. 

62 


SECOND  LECTURE 

In  truth  he  was  a stupendous  composer.  Studied  as 
mere  arrangement  of  lines  his  pictures  are  valuable 
lessons,  but  this  fundamental  quality  is  covered  up, 
as  in  the  works  of  Rubens,  by  so  much  drama  and  ex- 
ternal movement  that  one  does  not  discover  easily  the 
laws  by  which  no  great  work  lives  in  plastic  art  that 
has  not  those  qualities  at  bottom;  the  same  qualities 
which  make  all  decorative  work,  that  are  all  questions 
of  proportion,  all  questions  of  balance.  Perhaps  this 
very  point  annoyed  his  opponents,  even  his  slighter 
works  being  so  much  more  serious  than  they  appeared 
to  be.  But  the  admirers  of  Delacroix  were  all  men  of 
great  and  persistent  importance.  He  appealed  to  the 
feelings  of  the  poets  and  of  the  younger  artists,  and 
the  Institute  was  obliged  at  length  to  accept  him;  yet, 
to  the  disgrace  of  the  official  architects  and  painters  of 
France,  he  would  not  have  been  elected  had  it  not  been 
for  the  votes  of  the  musicians,  who  recognised  in  him  a 
lover  of  that  branch  of  art.  For  Delacroix  the  place 
seemed  important  because  it  gave  him  a fixed  position 
before  the  public,  always  ready  to  accept  any  one  be- 
longing to  organised  institutions.  He  was  a prudent 
man  and  refused  no  honourable  chance  of  continuing  to 
exercise  what  was  to  him  a real  call.  He  was  also  a very 
generous  man  to  his  rivals  and  on  certain  occasions  even 

63 


SECOND  LECTURE 


took  up  the  cause  of  his  most  implacable  enemies,  men 
who  hated  him  beyond  expression.  In  all  he  was  a right- 
minded  gentleman,  with  a profound  contempt  for  mean- 
ness. We  have  the  accidental  record  of  his  life  through 
his  habit  of  noting  for  many  years  the  small  events  of 
his  day,  his  methods  of  work,  and  his  artistic  opinions. 
They  are  all  to  his  infinite  credit ; indeed,  we  might  be 
sure  beforehand  that  such  would  be  the  case  from  the 
nobility  of  his  work  and  its  detachment  from  the  pur- 
suit of  public  favour.  But  there  is  a significant  side,  as 
I noted  before,  to  his  explanation  of  his  artistic  views, 
that  is,  their  conservatism  and  love  of  the  past,  and 
the  assertion  of  the  very  principles  which  his  enemies 
imagined  he  contradicted  by  his  work.  However,  as 
Millet  remarked,  “ They  have  passed  and  he  remains. 
Their  voices  disappeared  hurled  as  against  a monu- 
ment.” His  life,  which  had  always  been  endangered  by 
illness,  came  to  an  end  in  1864.  He  slowly  passed  away, 
receiving  the  visit  of  the  members  of  the  Institute  on 
his  deathbed,  and  saying  when  they  left : “ Haven’t  they 
already  bored  me  enough?  ” 

In  his  long  and  carefully  devised  will,  dictated  a few 
hours  before  his  death,  the  last  words  typify  his  loves 
and  hatreds.  He  asks  for  neither  emblem  nor  inscrip- 
tion on  his  tomb,  which  was  to  be  copied  from  “ classic 

64 


SECOND  LECTURE 

forms  with  firm  masculine  mouldings,”  “ contrary,”  he 
says,  “ to  all  that  is  now  done  in  architecture.” 

At  the  time  of  his  death  there  were  still  living  men 
whom  he  had  influenced,  as  in  fact  he  influenced  all  who 
were  out  of  the  Academic  School:  Barye,  the  sculptor, 
whose  work  resembles  his  closely,  for  Delacroix  was  a 
great  lover  of  animals  and  has  left  very  many  drawings 
of  the  great  wild  beasts,  the  subjects  also  of  Barye’s 
genius ; Decamps  was  dead,  who  belonged  more  to  his 
own  time ; Corot,  Rousseau,  Diaz,  Millet,  were  in  the  full 
springtide  of  their  great  careers.  Most  of  the  ideas  that 
he  believed  in,  they  worked  in  also,  but  in  other  ways, 
as  he  himself  thought  right.  They  too,  were  fond  of  all 
art,  and  they  objected  to  the  narrowness  of  Parisian 
teaching,  and  were  also  more  or  less  persecuted  by  the 
representatives  of  official  art. 

I do  not  dare  to  take  up  Millet  in  this  lecture,  but 
I hope  to  do  so  in  the  next  lecture  and  to  connect  him 
with  Delacroix.  We  must  bear  this  in  mind,  that  they 
are  extremely  different  in  the  quality  of  mind,  in  their 
origin,  in  their  social  ideas.  Millet,  accused  of  socialism 
because  of  his  general  ideas,  which  in  reality  are  as  far 
back  as  the  middle  ages ; Delacroix,  having  the  feeling 
of  the  Englishman  of  rank,  perfectly  willing  to  have  lib- 
erty and  everything  of  the  kind,  everything  for  the  best 

65 


SECOND  LECTURE 


private  order  that  goes  along  with  it ; each  of  these  men 
living  in  differing  parts  of  society  and  continuing  in 
differing  parts  of  society,  knowing  each  other  only  by 
their  works.  Therefore  I can  take  them  up  in  this  way 
separately  and  perhaps  without  injuring  the  connec- 
tion. 


66 


! 


THIRD  LECTURE 


The  story  of  J.  F.  Millet  is  a vision  of  emotional  art , 
and  balances  the  record  of  Delacroix,  with  whom  we 
began.  The  admiration  of  Millet  for  Delacroix  so  dif- 
ferent from  him.  Corot’s  astonishment  at  Delacroix’s 
mysterious  power  which  “ frightened  ” him.  The 
“ Amende  Honorable  ” ( now  in  Philadelphia)  cited. 

Millet  saw  in  Delacroix  the  proper  dramatic  expres- 
sion belonging  to  the  art  of  painting.  The  theatrical 
opposite  in  French  art,  especially  modern,  “ gave  him  a 
distaste  for  the  theatre  itself.”  The  source  of  dramatic 
expression,  however,  in  Delacroix  is  lyrical.  Compare 
Heine.  Origins  of  Millet  in  Norman  France.  His  family; 
his  grandmother.  The  Bible  and  Virgil.  His  antecedents 
and  origins  are  really  the  subject  of  his  pictures . In 
this  he  separates  from  other  painters.  Therefore  his 
personal  story  is  important.  He  learns  as  he  best  can. 
He  comes  to  Paris  to  study,  also  to  work.  He  marries. 
His  wife’s  death  sends  him  back  to  the  home  life  of 
peasantry.  He  marries  again:  returns  to  Paris.  Paints 
variously.  Is  suddenly  converted  to  abandon  his  methods 
and  subjects  and  to  take  up  the  life  at  Fontainebleau 
which  he  has  illustrated  by  his  drawings  and  paintings. 
His  connection  with  the  ancient  past  of  France  as  ex- 
pressed in  the  middle  ages.  Ideals  of  life,  spiritual  and 
moral,  little  known  to  us  here. 


THIRD  LECTURE 


I HAVE  chosen  to  continue  with  the  story  of  Jean 
Francois  Millet  because  of  his  bringing  a vision 
of  emotional  art  fit  to  balance  the  record  of  Delacroix 
with  whom  I began. 

Delacroix  was  Millet’s  first  and  only  admiration 
among  modern  painters,  notwithstanding  their  very  op- 
posite points  of  view,  their  extremely  opposite  training 
end  education,  their  social  views,  and  a distinct  antith- 
esis, or  opposite  of  character.  You  can  see  that  if  I 
can  fall  back  on  the  admiration  of  such  a man,  I cannot 
have  exaggerated  what  I told  you  yesterday.  I cannot 
have  exaggerated  44  Father  ” Corot’s  statement,  that  the 
other  man  (Delacroix)  was  an  eagle,  and  he  himself  was 
but  the  small  bird  twittering  in  the  clouds;  or  his 
astonishment  at  Delacroix’s  painting,  which  we  now 
have  here,  the  44  Amende  Honorable.”  In  a way  it  is  im- 
possible to  analyse.  He  has  given  the  type  of  the  Gothic 
interior  building.  It  is  taken  from  an  original,  but  it 
resembles  it  in  no  way.  It  is,  as  it  were,  a type  of  all 

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Gothic  buildings  of  the  late  period.  It  was  this  which 
amazed  Corot,  who  said,  “ What  a terrible  man  he  is.” 
For  Delacroix  had  passed  beyond  the  limit  even  of 
Corot’s  long  experience  in  the  methods  by  which  a man, 
when  he  does  a work  of  art,  gives  a type , not  a mere 
representation  of  a single  fact,  but  a representation  of 
all  the  facts  that  have  happened  or  may  happen. 

Now  these  two  men,  Delacroix  and  Millet,  extremely 
different  in  their  natures,  who  used  the  most  divergent 
technique,  in  many  cases  could  not  be  more  apart.  But  it 
is  one  of  the  characteristics  of  this  group  of  men  (whom 
we  misname  the  Barbizon,  or  Fontainebleau,  men), 
that  their  scheme  of  ideas  could  be  different,  and  yet 
that  they  could  recognise  a common  bond  of  union.  In 
the  work  of  Delacroix  Millet  could  see  the  proper  dra- 
matic expression  belonging  to  the  art  of  painting,  while 
the  expression  of  most  of  the  painters  of  the  time  was 
to  him  based  on  the  art  and  methods  of  the  theatre. 
That,  you  will  remember,  we  spoke  of  yesterday.  As  he, 
Millet,  once  wrote : “ The  paintings  of  the  Luxembourg 
Gallery”  (the  gallery  of  modern  French  art),  “have 
given  me  a distaste  for  the  theatre  itself.”  But  the 
dramatic  expression  of  Delacroix  has  another  basis  than 
Millet’s.  It  is  lyrical;  it  is  an  expression  of  personal 
mood,  of  desire,  of  sentiment,  perhaps  only  momentary, 

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and  the  story  or  image  depicted  is  the  method  of  imply- 
ing this.  Let  us  take  an  example  of  this  attitude  in 
poetry,  and  remember  Heine’s  “ King  Richard  Cceur- 
de-Lion  ” : 

Wohl  durch  der  Walder  einodige  Pracht 
Jagt  ungestiim  ein  Reiter; 

Er  blast  ins  Horn,  er  singt  und  lacht 
Gar  seelenvergniigt  und  heiter. 

Sein  Harnisch  ist  von  starkem  Erz, 

Noch  starker  ist  sein  Gemiite, 

Das  ist  Herr  Richard  Lowenherz, 

Der  christlichen  Ritterschaft  Bliite. 

Willkommen  in  England!  rufen  ihm  zu 
Die  Baume  mit  griinen  Zungen — 

Wir  freuen  uns,  o Kdnig,  dass  du 
Oestreichischer  Haft  entsprungen. 

Dem  Konig  ist  wohl  in  der  freien  Luft, 

Er  fiihlt  sich  wie  neugeboren, 

Er  denkt  an  Oestreichs  Festungsduft — 

Und  gibt  seinem  Pferde  die  Sporen.1 

In  poor  English  it  is  this  way: 

Right  through  the  forest’s  solitary  pride 
Chases  undisturbed  a knight; 

He  blows  his  horn,  he  sings  and  he  laughs, 

Full  joyful  in  heart  and  happy. 

His  harness  is  of  iron  hard, 

But  harder  still  is  his  temper, 

He  is  Lord  Richard  of  the  Lion  Heart, 

The  bloom  of  Christian  knighthood. 

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THIRD  LECTURE 

Now  here  we  have  the  same  thing  as  Delacroix’s 
painting.  Like  King  Richard,  Heine  has  also  escaped 
from  the  oppressions  and  dangers  of  German  captivity, 
and  still  quivering  with  joy  in  the  air  of  a free  country, 
occasionally  he  spurs  his  horse,  remembering  the  cruel 
past.  So  naturally  flow  from  him  the  lovely  lines  which 
tell  of  the  English  king,  back  from  his  German  prison, 
galloping  again  through  the  woods  of  England.  The 
trees  call  to  him  a welcome,  he  sits  his  saddle  in  joy,  as 
if  new-born,  and  oh ! the  thought  of  the  past  tyranny 
makes  him  give  his  steed  the  spurs.  It  is  a picture  of 
the  king,  “ the  bloom  of  Christian  chivalry.”  It  is  also 
the  picture  of  joyful  escape,  and  the  picture  of  Heine’s 
deliverance. 

Quite  otherwise  is  an  attitude  like  Millet’s,  though 

his  characteristic  paintings  are  more  than  most  the 

expression  of  perpetual  deep  feelings — but  they  are 

mainly  based  on  actual  sight,  on  a severe  realism.  (When 

I speak  of  Millet,  I speak  of  the  man,  the  Barbizon  man, 

Welcome  to  England!  Call  out  to  him 
The  trees  with  tongues  of  green — 

We  rejoice,  O King,  that  thou 
Hast  escaped  from  Austrian  durance. 

For  the  King  it  is  well  in  the  free  air, 

He  feels  as  if  new-born; 

He  thinks  of  the  Austrian  prison  air. 

And  he  gives  the  spurs  to  his  horse. 

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THIRD  LECTURE 

the  man  of  the  forest  of  Fontainebleau,  not  of  the 
youngster  who  tried  experiments  and  worked  for  bread 
at  the  moment,  and  also  was  learning  his  trade,  as 
we  all  must,  never  knowing  it  well  enough.)  We  all 
know  that  he  suffered  much  from  the  meanness  of  the 
men  who  pressed  about  him,  but  that  meanness  of  mind 
that  he  felt  in  others  has  left  no  trace  in  his  works. 
Except  for  an  absence  of  all  vulgarity,  of  all  common- 
place, of  all  that  may  degrade,  there  is  nothing  in  their 
severe  serenity,  or  sadness,  to  imply  even  the  feeling  of 
disdain,  a feeling  so  apparent  in  the  man  he  most  ad- 
mired, Michael  Angelo.  A singular  fate  chose  him  to 
express  forever  certain  things  from  out  of  which  he  was 
born,  and  into  which  he  returned.  His  antecedents  and 
his  origin  are  in  reality  the  subject  of  his  pictures; 
I mean  of  those  by  which  he  separates  himself  entirely 
from  all  other  painters  and  will  be  remembered.  There- 
fore his  early  story  is  all-important.  It  has  the  note  of 
his  pictures,  austerity,  the  nature  of  the  landscape  of 
his  birthplace,  beaten  by  the  winds  and  rains  of  the 
Channel,  and  simple  and  stern  in  form.  It  is  occupied 
by  the  somewhat  harsh  descendants  of  Normans,  the 
men  who  conquered  England.  The  names  of  places 
through  that  part  of  France  indicate  that  from  there 
came  the  persistent  invaders  of  England  and  adventur- 

73 


THIRD  LECTURE 


ers  to  other  lands,  Sicily,  Italy,  the  Canaries.  The  name 
of  the  first  patron,  that  is  to  say,  of  the  man  who  first 
gave  an  order  to  our  artist  when  he  began  to  paint  at 
home,  is  the  same  as  that  of  the  bold  Norman  burgher 
who,  standing  before  the  altar  of  the  abbey  church  at 
Caen  at  the  burial  of  William  the  Conqueror,  claimed 
the  place  and  the  price  of  the  grave  as  belonging  to  his 
own  estate,  of  which  he  had  been  unjustly  deprived  by 
the  building  of  the  church.  The  Normans  and  their 
descendants  everywhere  are  fond  of  law ; fond  of  prop- 
erty ; fond  of  everything  steady ; they  are  acquisitive ; 
they  are  not  always  pleasant,  but  whenever  there  has 
been  a chance  for  them  to  develop  some  great  form  of 
poetry  in  action,  or  in  what  we  call  the  arts,  they  have 
done  so. 

On  the  cliffs  of  La  Hogue,  that  overlook  the  sea  by 
Cherbourg,  in  the  hamlet  of  Gruchy,  Jean  Francis 
Millet  was  born,  October  4,  1814.  His  first  name  came 
from  his  father’s,  Jean  Louis,  and  the  second  from  the 
love  for  St.  Francis  of  Assisi,  that  filled  the  austere 
soul  of  his  grandmother,  who  was  the  real  head  of  the 
family,  according  to  ancestral  habits.  For  each  part  of 
what  we  call  France  has  separate  qualities,  a separate 
existence,  exceedingly  different,  absolutely  contradic- 
tory, and  what  is  called  France  is  an  ideal  wThich  does 

74 


THIRD  LECTURE 


not  exist  in  the  actual  people.  There  can  be  no  greater 
difference  than  between  this  Norman  here  and  the  south- 
ern Frenchman,  almost  a Spaniard,  or  belonging  to  the 
Mediterranean,  or  else  the  slow,  ponderous  Fleming  of 
northern  France,  or  again  of  Lorraine,  and  formerly 
of  Alsace.  All  these  parts  of  France,  within  the  time  of 
two  lives,  have  been  joined  together  by  law,  by  force, 
by  tyranny,  by  profit,  by  all  the  things  that  gradually 
help,  but  they  each  in  their  own  day  had  as  separate  an 
existence  as  any  nation  on  earth.  So  that  when  we  come 
to  Millet’s  origin,  we  can  feel  that  this  special  man  of 
pure  Norman  blood  had  not  in  himself  the  same  thing 
to  say,  so  as  to  be  easily  understood  by  the  southern 
Frenchman  with  whom  he  lived  every  day  and  with 
whom  he  shared  friendly  ideas.  But  those  ideas,  those 
which  the  French  define  as  “ behind  one’s  head,”  remain 
absolutely  different. 

They  were  no  commonplace  people,  these  peasant 
proprietors,  of  whom  Millet  was  born,  who  in  frugality 
and  unremitting  toil,  and  in  another  characteristic  so 
important  and  so  different  that  we  can  hardly  realise  it 
here — “ in  the  respectability  of  admitted  poverty  ” — - 
in  religious  practice  and  the  fear  of  God,  maintained  a 
large  family  on  the  few  inherited  acres.  Understand  that 
it  was  respectable  to  be  poor,  and  to  admit  it,  and  that 

75 


THIRD  LECTURE 


it  might  be  a special  gift  of  God  to  be  poor,  it  might 
be  a special  grace  that  one  had  to  endure.  It  was  a 
special  grace  that  one  had  to  work;  it  was  a special 
grace  that  one  had  not  all  the  temptations  of  happiness. 
Such  a realisation  of  fate  gave  to  those  people,  and 
probably  might  give  all  of  us  more  or  less,  a dignity  of 
mind  which  is  not  otherwise  explainable  without  this 
inspiration.1 

Millet’s  mother  was  of  a family  of  gentlemen  who 
were  broken  in  fortune  by  the  great  Revolution.  His 
father  had  a great  sense  of  beauty,  and  early  called  the 
child’s  attention  to  the  perfection  of  natural  objects, 
to  the  lines  and  arrangement  of  the  landscape  about 
them.  He  was  fond  of  music  also,  and  noted  the  church 
chaunts  with  the  care  and  elegance  of  a mediaeval  scribe. 
Here  again  he  taught  the  boy  what  could  be  made  out 
of  the  forms  of  letters.  There  was  an  uncle,  a miller, 
who  read  Pascal  and  Montaigne  and  the  great  Jansen  - 
ists  of  the  seventeenth  century;  that  is  to  say,  he  read 
two  of  the  great  opposite  thinkers  in  the  very  best 
forms  that  one  of  the  most  classical  of  languages  has 
developed.  He  may  have  been  also  according  to  some  re- 

1 Let  us  be  reminded  of  the  Persian  poet.  Dejami  wrote:  “Oh,  Lord! 
Do  Thou  honour  my  head  by  giving  me  the  crown  of  poverty.” 

“ On  the  road  that  leads  to  Thee,  make  me  draw  back  from  any  path 
that  does  not  lead  to  Thee.” 


76 


THIRD  LECTURE 


ports,  and  apparently  also  by  something  of  Millet’s 
story,  affected  by  what  is  called  Jansenism,  that  is  to 
say,  perhaps  a stricter  view  of  the  church  than  the 
average  church  has  developed.  Another  uncle  was  a 
physician  and  chemist,  once  indeed  an  associate  of  Spal- 
lanzani. Another  uncle  was  a peasant  priest,  who,  at  the 
risk  of  his  life,  refused  to  conform  with  the  state 
against  his  conscience.  That  was  during  the  French 
Revolution.  Later,  when  freed  from  church  obligations, 
he  helped,  enormous  in  size  and  strength,  at  the  harsh 
field  labours,  still  keeping  the  dress  of  his  cloth  and 
observing  its  rules  in  little  as  well  as  great  things,  and 
teaching  besides  the  children  too  poor  to  pay  for 
schooling. 

But  the  grandmother  was  the  great  influence.  She 
wras  the  director  and  help  of  all:  her  austere  ideas  of 
duty  and  religion,  mingled,  as  Millet  has  said,  with  the 
love  of  Nature,  as  they  did  in  the  life  of  that  St. 
Francis,  after  whom  she  had  named  the  little  boy  Fran- 
cis. “ Wake  up,”  she  used  to  say  at  dawn,  “ wake  up, 
little  Francis ; already  the  birds  have  begun  to  sing  the 
glory  of  God.”  That,  you  will  remember,  is  a following 
of  St.  Francis,  of  the  story  of  his  love  of  Nature  as 
expressing  the  glory  of  the  Creator  and  the  happiness 
which  all  should  have.  They  all  read  St.  Augustine  and 

77 


THIRD  LECTURE 

the  “ Lives  of  the  Saints  ” and  St.  Jerome’s  letters, 
which  the  painter  later  read  and  reread,  and  also  the 
works  of  the  great  opposing  bishops,  Bossuet  and 
Fenelon. 

Later,  when  the  boy  went  to  school  the  exquisite 
charm  of  Virgil  moved  him.  Virgil  and  the  Bible  re- 
mained his  books  to  the  end.  They  are  the  books  of  his 
great  pictures  if  we  see  them  right. 

But  the  boy’s  duties  were  those  of  outside  work,  and 
for  eighteen  years  he  laboured  with  his  father  and  his 
kindred.  His  father,  however,  had  always  felt  kindly 
toward  the  boy’s  attempts  at  drawing.  One  day,  on  his 
making  some  special  drawing,  his  father  said : “ I should 
have  been  willing  to  have  thee  taught  the  painter’s 
trade;  they  say  it  is  beautiful,  but  I needed  thee:  now 
thy  brothers  are  growing  up,  and  I shall  not  prevent 
thy  learning  what  thou  desirest.” 

So  that  they  went  to  the  town  of  Cherbourg  and 
showed  the  drawings  to  a painter  of  the  place,  who 
recognised  a great  promise  and  began  directing  the  boy 
in  a training  interrupted  by  his  father’s  death.  Jean 
Francois  returned  for  a time  to  help  the  family,  then 
returned  to  study  under  an  artist  professor  at  the 
Cherbourg  College.  Then  for  a time  he  drew  and  copied 
pictures  in  the  city  museum,  which  contains  some  fairly 

78 


THIRD  LECTURE 


good  examples  of  various  old  schools,  and  indeed  at 
least  one  interesting  Rubens.  The  boy  read  also  all  that 
he  could  find,  from  Homer  to  Cooper’s  novels.  Within 
a very  small  place  were  some  few  advantages.  I am  re- 
ferring not  to  his  country  place,  his  country  living,  and 
what  he  saw  that  way,  but  to  the  ordinary  teaching  that 
a much  smaller  town  then,  than  now,  could  give  to  a boy 
who  had  a taste  for  art.  Then  upon  the  recommenda- 
tion of  his  teacher  the  municipality  of  Cherbourg 
agreed  to  give  young  Millet  an  annuity  of  two  hundred 
dollars  to  allow  him  to  study  in  Paris  more  seriously. 
Two  hundred  dollars — of  course  we  are  talking  of  a 
great  many  years  back — and  then,  in  France  it  would 
go  farther  than  our  dollars  do  here.  With  this  small 
amount  and  a little  aid  from  home,  Millet  began  his 
studies  and  work  in  Paris.  He  was  then  twenty-two  years 
old  and  now  independent  for  the  first  time,  and  therefore 
dependent  upon  his  own  resources,  having  to  earn  some- 
thing to  supplement  the  two  hundred  dollars.  He  had 
read,  as  you  see.  Without  knowing  it  he  had  prepared 
his  views  of  art  and  the  direction  of  his  technique.  But 
he  suffered  from  isolation.  He  had  already  developed 
a shyness  that  never  left  him,  and  he  always  felt  this 
when  he  met  a stranger  or  a new  question.  This  shy- 
ness, the  habit  of  silence,  that  we  know  to  be  born  of 

79 


THIRD  LECTURE 


the  fields,  made  Millet  appear  to  the  youngsters  of 
his  time  a “ Barbarian,”  “ a man  of  the  woods,”  as 
they  said. 

The  young  “ Barbarian  ” had  to  choose  a master, 
and  we  have  seen  how  he  felt  toward  modern  French 
art.  He  entered  the  studio  of  Delaroche,  then  one  of  the 
most  famous  and  successful  painters.  Many  well-known 
names  were  among  his  fellow-students.  They  did  not  un- 
derstand him,  though  his  teacher  in  a way  understood 
the  merits  of  the  beginner’s  points.  They  were  not  those 
which  he  specially  taught.  Yes,  there  were  many  of  those 
students,  men  of  considerable  mark  afterward,  and  one 
of  my  great  sorrows  was  to  find  among  them  at  the 
time  Millet  was  beginning  really  to  mark  his  very 
course,  to  find  a distrust,  a disbelief,  and  almost  a hatred 
of  him. 

Millet’s  consolation  lay  in  the  works  of  the  old  mas- 
ters, in  Michael  Angelo’s  designs,  in  the  early  paintings 
he  saw  in  the  Louvre.  They  “ magnetised  ” him,  as  he 
said.  When  he  was  alone  in  his  little  garret  “ he  thought 
alone  of  those  fervid,  sweet  masters  who  have  made 
human  creatures  so  passionate  as  to  be  beautiful,  and 
so  nobly  beautiful  that  they  are  images  of  God.”  This  I 
take  from  a letter  of  Millet’s  to  his  friend  Sensier. 
Millet  looked  at  the  eighteenth-century  work  mostly 

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THIRD  LECTURE 

later,  imitating  what  it  had,  or  at  least  some  part  of 
what  it  had.  He  little  knew  at  first  that  soon  he  should 
have  to  imitate  it,  or  suggest  it,  or  recall  it  in  colour- 
ing, to  supply  the  constant  market  which  is  made  by 
the  furnishings  and  furniture  of  a period  which  is 
still  necessarily  in  the  fashion,  as  being  more  con- 
nected than  any  other  with  modern  life.  But  this  was 
later,  when  he  was  driven  to  do  anything  that  might 
give  food  and  lodging  and  a little  time  for  graver 
study.  Delaroche,  who  had  thought  of  making  him  an 
assistant,  chilled  him  by  explaining  that  whether  he 
deserved  it  or  not,  the  support  he  could  give  him  in 
his  contest  for  the  Roman  prize,  which  sends  a youth 
free  to  Italy  and  study  of  the  masters,  naturally  could 
not  be  his  (Millet’s)  until  another  more  favoured, 
but  less  deserving,  pupil  was  helped  first.  This  man, 
who  did  get  the  Roman  prize,  is  known  only  by 
the  fact. 

The  whole  course  of  Millet  in  art,  the  course  of 
French  art,  was  thereby  changed  to  suit  a young  man 
of  some  unimportance  to  whom  the  great  man,  the 
manager  of  the  French  art  patronage,  wished  to  give 
a little  favour. 

Millet  then  was  deterred  from  further  remaining  with 
Delaroche,  who  yet  had  otherwise  been  kind  and  gener- 

81 


THIRD  LECTURE 


ous  to  him.  He  then  decided  to  work  by  himself,  for 
himself.  He  had  made  a studio  friend  of  some  means, 
who  studied  with  him  and  helped  him  to  sell  little  pic- 
tures and  drawings,  that  Millet  made,  by  his  friend’s 
advice,  more  or  less  imitations  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury. These  paintings  and  drawings,  which  we  call 
among  artists  “ potboilers,”  realised  small  sums,  four 
dollars,  let  us  say,  and  sometimes  they  went  down  to  a 
dollar  or  less.  Also  portraits  at  one  dollar,  and  with 
these  sums  Millet  managed  to  continue  his  more  serious 
studies.  Once  he  went  back  to  the  town  of  Cherbourg, 
where  he  had  some  orders,  whose  execution  seemed  un- 
successful to  the  people  there.  With  what  he  had  of 
his  own  and  his  little  gains  he  dared  to  marry,  and 
brought  his  wife  with  him  to  Paris.  Then  began  the 
more  serious  struggle  from  which  he  never  absolutely 
escaped. 

Delacroix,  on  the  contrary,  remains  a bachelor.  He 
knows ; he  has  been  brought  up  in  another  way,  and  he 
repays  the  training  of  high  society;  he  knows,  and  he 
refuses  anything  which  will  entangle  anybody  else  with 
himself.  Delacroix  knows  beforehand,  without  any  ex- 
perience and  without  any  training,  and  he  keeps  firmly 
to  that  all  his  life.  Nor  for  the  man  Millet,  of  the  tem- 
perament I have  suggested,  with  a view  of  the  world 

82 


THIRD  LECTURE 

which  I have  described,  so  opposite  to  the  other  who 
accepts  the  world  at  its  worst,  could  anything  else  be 
more  expressive  of  the  difference. 

Millet’s  work  at  this  time  shows  occasionally  the  fu- 
ture gravity  that  we  note.  It  is  usually  either  very  real- 
istic in  manner  of  study,  or  is  merely  a pleasing  ar- 
rangement of  colour  and  form  sufficient  to  make  an 
appeal  to  a public  for  a reward  to  keep  the  little  family 
together.  Millet  later  did  right  to  close  out  his  past.  It 
had  nothing  to  do  but  to  accustom  him  to  the  use  of 
paint,  which  is  after  all  much  like  the  use  of  language 
in  literature;  to  handle  a brush;  to  get  what  other 
people  had  been  at ; to  decide  whether  he  liked  this,  or 
whether  he  liked  that,  or  the  other.  Some  pieces  of  this 
time  are  beautiful,  but  they  are  not  really  the  man  ; they 
are  “better  painted,”  if  I may  use  the  French  sordid 
term ; they  are  in  more  conformable  technique  than  some 
of  the  greater  work  and  the  more  important;  and  by 
better  technique  I don’t  mean  higher  technique,  I mean 
technique  which  is  complete  in  itself  and  rounded  out, 
which  explains  itself  and  has  all  its  laws  developed, 
while  the  great  technique  of  Millet  with  which  he  ended, 
has  no  continuation  for  average  men ; it  cannot  be  imi- 
tated ; it  would  be  an  unpardonable  mistake,  a piece  of 
insolence  to  try  to  do  the  same  thing  again.  It  would  be 

83 


THIRD  LECTURE 


inexcusable.  Certain  things  are  allowed  to  certain  people 
and  not  to  others. 

Some  appreciation  Millet  met,  but  not  enough  to  help 
him  far.  His  wife  died,  and  Millet,  broken  in  mind  for 
a time,  escaped  and  made  for  his  old  home.  There  again 
he  did  better,  had  a little  success  and  gathered  a little 
money.  Marrying  again,  he  ventured  a second  time  to 
Paris  and  was  slowly  finding  his  way  to  the  expression 
by  which  we  know  him  later.  He  painted  pictures  upon 
imaginative  subjects,  or  stories,  motives  forever  real 
and  lyrical,  but  which  works  were  not  formed  by  any 
expression  of  his  own  passion,  therefore  not  true  es- 
sentially. Then  he  slowly  made  his  way  to  the  expression 
by  which  we  know  him  later.  According  to  the  usual 
habit  of  painters,  especially  at  that  moment,  many  of  his 
pictures  represented  nude  subjects,  which  allowed  him 
to  study  further,  of  course,  as  we  students  know,  the 
construction  of  the  human  form  at  the  expense  of  the 
purchaser.  Nor  should  I note  the  fact  were  it  not  that 
upon  this  question  of  the  morality  of  the  subject  turned 
the  decision  of  Millet’s  later  life.  The  question  is  placed 
in  a letter  addressed  to  him  by  his  grandmother,  re- 
ferring to  his  painting  of  an  imaginary  temptation  of 
St.  Jerome.  Its  biblical  appeal  is  the  key  to  the  mind 
of  the  family.  This  is  what  the  old  lady  wrote : “ Thou 

84 


THIRD  LECTURE 


art  painting  a portrait  of  Saint  Jerome  mourning  over 
the  dangers  of  youth.  Do  thou,  dear  child,  live  as  he 
did;  draw  therefrom  a holy  profit;  follow  the  example 
of  that  man  of  thy  profession  who  said  ‘ I paint  for 
eternity.’  For  whatever  reason,  never  allow  thyself  to  do 
any  wrong  work.  Lose  not  the  presence  of  God;  with 
Saint  Jerome,  think  continually  of  the  call  to  judgment.” 

Like  all  true  artists  Millet  was  in  love  with  life.  He 
pictured  it  as  it  came  to  his  memory  or  imagination, 
but  the  temper  of  the  man  was  too  serious  to  pass  over 
that  line  which  limits  our  view  of  life  to  self-abandon- 
ment to  its  impulses;  and  whatever  his  subjects,  his 
rendering  of  them  is  essentially  chaste.  In  fact  he  re- 
sembles the  great  Tintoretto,  whose  important  repre- 
sentations of  classical  mythology  are  as  far  from  cen- 
sure as  any  religious  work.  They  are  merely  the  human 
form  in  healthy,  glorious  innocence,  realising  therein 
the  words  sometimes  attributed  to  Saint  Thomas 
Aquinas,  giving,  to  the  comfort  of  us  artists  and  stu- 
dents, in  a single  definition  the  innocence  of  art  itself ; 
calling  it  “ The  place  of  innocence  ” ; the  land  of  in- 
nocence ; it  has  no  hurt  in  its  condition. 

Millet  had  begun  to  make  friends  and  earn  a little; 
whereupon  came  the  well-known  episode,  his  hearing  two 
men  who  were  looking  at  a picture  of  his  in  a shop 

85 


THIRD  LECTURE 


window — some  women  bathing.  One  of  them  had  said: 
“ That  picture  is  by  a certain  Millet,  who  paints  only 
naked  women.”  Our  artist’s  dignity  was  revolted.  He 
told  his  wife  what  he  had  heard,  saying : “ If  it  suits 
you  I shall  never  do  anything  more  of  that  kind  of 
work.  Our  life  must  become  harder,  and  harder  for  you, 
but  I shall  be  free,  and  shall  accomplish  what  has  filled 
my  mind  for  a long  time.”  To  this  she  answered,  being 
a woman  of  like  turn  of  mind:  “ I am  ready.”  It  is  not, 
as  you  see,  from  want  of  admiration  in  the  mind  of  this 
man  for  the  paintings,  the  drawings,  the  designs,  every- 
thing in  which  the  nude  has  been  most  successfully  and 
splendidly  used,  from  Delacroix,  whom  he  liked,  to 
Michael  Angelo,  away  back.  He  did  not  judge  them, 
or  object  in  the  slightest,  but  for  him  it  was  evident 
he  could  not  do  certain  things  and  have  any  doubt  in 
his  own  mind.  The  pair  had  a little  money  then  laid  up. 
They  left  Paris  for  the  country,  at  Barbizon,  which 
was  to  become  the  continuous  residence  of  Millet  for 
the  next  twenty-seven  years — the  remainder  of  his  life. 
He  found  other  painters  there;  among  others,  Rous- 
seau, who  with  him  was  to  give  the  forest  adjoining  a 
celebrity  in  art  sufficient  to  name  the  school,  with  a bet- 
ter name,  I think,  than  that  of  Barbizon,  the  school  of 
Fontainebleau. 


86 


THIRD  LECTURE 

Then  began,  in  1849  and  1850,  the  development  of 
the  extraordinary  career  which  separates  Millet  from 
all  the  other  painters  before  him  and  which  will  never 
be  repeated.  The  charm  of  landscape  surrounding  him 
had  seized  him.  It  was  sufficiently  different  from  his 
native  open  spaces,  often  wind-swept  and  barren,  to 
bring  in  him  a new  enthusiasm  for  what  Nature  says: 
“ The  calm  and  grandeur  of  the  forest  is  so  great  that 
I feel  as  if  I were  afraid:  I don’t  know  what  the  trees 
say  to  each  other,  but  they  say  something  which  we  do 
not  quite  understand,  because  we  do  not  speak  the  same 
language.”  That  is  in  a letter  to  Sensier  in  1850.  Be- 
sides these  new  varieties  of  shapes  of  things,  different, 
but  yet  the  same;  dawn,  the  midday  heat,  the  cool  of 
the  evening,  the  rain  of  autumn,  the  snow,  every  mood 
of  which  brought  back  the  man’s  eighteen  years  of  field 
life.  Millet  again  saw  peasants  somewhat  similar  to  those 
of  his  youth,  to  those  from  whom  he  sprang.  All  their 
ways  he  understood : he  himself  could  instruct  a man  at 
work  in  the  field  how  to  do  a better  job.  His  friend  and 
my  friend,  William  Hunt,  our  American,  told  me  that 
he  had  seen  Millet  tie  up  bundles  of  corn  to  prove  to 
some  peasants  how  much  better  it  could  be  done.  And 
this  is  the  important  point ; all  the  more  was  Millet  im- 
pelled to  disengage  from  the  realism  which  he  under- 

87 


THIRD  LECTURE 

stood  and  could  copy,  the  ideal  type  of  each  of  the 
functions  in  the  life  of  the  worker  in  the  field.1 

Therefore  it  is  not,  I say,  a sower,  a reaper,  a gleaner 
that  he  has  given ; it  is  the  sower,  the  reaper,  the  glean- 
er. In  that  he  resembles  the  Greek  masters,  who  have  ex- 
pressed themselves  under  the  form  of  sculpture,  let  us 
say,  and  who  have  given  us  great  types,  which  may  or 
may  not  be  portraits,  but  which  have  fixed  the  expres- 
sion of  certain  human  conditions  in  such  a way  that  we 
unconsciously  think  of  them  as  the  definition  of  things. 

For  that  very  reason  Millet’s  work  tended  to  a form 
of  technique  which  resembles  the  idea  of  sculpture.  That 
is  its  great  charm,  its  superiority,  but  at  the  same  time 
its  frequent  limitation  as  far  as  the  differential  idea  of 
painting  interferes.  He  was  forced  to  a balance  of  ex- 
pression which  obliged  him  to  forego  often  many  charms 
belonging  to  the  special  art  of  painting,  which  is  a 
representation  of  surfaces.  These  great  sacrifices,  sacri- 


1 Millet’s  brother  told  me,  showing  me  one  of  the  engravings  he  had 
made,  from  the  painter,  that  he  himself  had  posed  for  that  peasant  in 
the  picture,  though  he  himself  had  lost  the  habit  of  the  fields  and  was 
no  longer  a peasant,  with  the  ideas  of  a peasant,  the  impressions  of  a 
peasant.  But  the  real  peasant  could  not  do  it  so  typically  as  this  man 
brought  now  to  understand,  though  for  him  it  was  merely  the  memory 
of  his  boy  life,  and  Millet  had  made  the  brother  pose  after  having  tried 
over  and  over  again  from  the  actual  peasant.  You  will  see  that  this  is 
entirely  contrary  to  our  usual  way  of  looking  at  realism. 

88 


“ON  THE 
CLIFFS  OF 
LA  HOGUE ’ 


NOW  IN  THE  COLLECTION  OF  JOHN 


MILLET 


k 

£ 

HH 

PH 

<S\ 


JOHNSON 


“GOOSE  GIRL  BATHING' 


SPRING 


THE  LOUVRE 


MILLET 

“LA  FILEUSE ” 

NOW  IN  THE  COLLECTION  OF  J.  J.  HILL 


GLEANERS 


NOW  IN  THE  COLLECTION  OF  AUGUST  BELMONT 


THIRD  LECTURE 

fices  of  beauties  he  himself  loved,  shocked  the  public  of 
his  time  and  many  of  his  fellow-artists.  They  will  always 
be  felt,  and  will  repel  to  some  extent  the  desire  for  charm 
that  we  naturally  expect  in  the  representation  by  colour. 

But  as  they  are  logical  and  necessary  and  caused  by 
great  emotion  and  noblest  sincerity  they  will  also  be 
accepted  as  final.  No  one  without  the  mind  and  aim  of 
Millet  can  hope  to  tread  a similar  path,  nor  can  the  first 
impulse  that  created  these  pictures  come  again  easily. 
It  came  from  long  inheritance  of  hard  work,  accepted  in 
a religious  disposition  of  mind,  in  acceptance  of  labour 
and  suffering  as  the  lot  of  the  many,  and  indeed,  as  a 
divme  gift.  It  was  based  also  on  the  rarest  of  all  pos- 
sible expressions  through  art,  the  ancestral  respect  for 
poverty,  and  in  so  far  he  was  misunderstood  by  most 
people,  especially  by  the  critics  of  his  day,  who  thought 
that  they  saw  social  protest  in  what  was  really  the  ex- 
pression of  duty  and  resignation  to  the  common  fate  of 
most  men.  The  echoes  of  these  objections  have  died 
away,  but  they  served  as  a means  of  opposing  the 
painter  and  preventing  his  obtaining  reasonable  rec- 
ognition, and  were  used  to  turn  away  his  pictures 
from  the  great  exhibitions,  the  Salons,  which  is  the 
great  French  means  of  appealing  to  the  general  public. 
They  were  even  refused  as  immoral ; that  was  the 

89 


THIRD  LECTURE 


ground ; they  were  immoral,  they  were  vicious,  accord- 
ing to  these  gentlemen,  who  were  doing  all  they  could 
to  disgrace  French  art  themselves,  more  or  less  frankly. 
The  gravity  and  sometimes  the  harshness  in  Millet’s 
works  met  an  opposing  current  in  the  art  of  his  time 
among  the  official  artists,  the  teachers  of  the  great  gov- 
ernment school,  and  all  those  who  desired  to  be  amused 
by  paintings  rather  than  to  be  moved. 

Difficult  as  was  Millet’s  struggle,  and  though  his 
gains  were  but  just  enough  to  support  himself  and  his 
family,  he  had  some  sincere  friendships  among  a few  of 
the  artists,  notably  Rousseau.  They  formed  a manner 
of  “ twinship  ” in  habits,  yet  the  two  were  very  differ- 
ent in  their  social  beginnings,  ideas,  and  aspirations. 
Rousseau  as  far  as  possible  had  been  a manner  of  Re- 
publican, a firm  believer  in  new  theories,  thinking  prob- 
ably in  little  sympathy  with  the  ancient,  traditional 
religious  feeling. 

Slowly  the  perception  grew  that  a great  master,  ab- 
solutely different  from  and  yet  belonging  to  classical 
antiquity,  was  working  for  the  glory  of  French  art,  and 
as  the  one  recorder  of  a side  of  France  that  explains 
its  extraordinary  persistence.  Religious  art  had  almost 
ceased,  it  had  ceased  to  have  any  real  expression.  In 
these  works  of  Millet  remains  the  feeling  which  marks 

90 


THIRD  LECTURE 

the  great  works  of  the  middle  ages,  in  which  the  soul 
of  old  France  established  a form  as  important  as  the 
Greek.  So  much  of  modern  France  for  centuries  has 
moved  in  another  direction  that  it  is  but  natural  that 
Millet’s  work  should  have  been  appreciated  more  imi- 
mediately  by  Americans,  in  whom  remained  a certain 
mental  tradition  belonging  to  an  older  time.  If  in  your 
sculpture  room  you  look  about  and  see  any  fair  render- 
ing of  some  of  the  older  mediaeval  figures,  you  wTill  see  in 
a moment  what  I mean.  Those  are  nearer  Millet ; his  are 
more  decidedly  traditional  than  any  other  work  could 
possibly  be. 

Millet’s  paintings,  as  I said,  came  to  America  for  our 
admiration  at  a time  when  he  was  misunderstood  in 
France.  The  very  seriousness  which  troubled  the  French 
mind  was  rather  an  appeal  here  than  a difficulty.  I think 
it  should  remain  a satisfaction  and  pride  to  us  that  we 
saw  a great  deal  further  than  the  official  dispensers  of 
fame  in  cultivated  France. 

The  story  closes  as  it  began.  Our  artist  painted  to 
the  end  in  difficulties,  very  often  in  ill-health,  which 
came  from  earlier  hardships,  but  he  managed  to  bring 
up  a family  and  to  live  a life  which  does  honour  to  man. 


9 1 


FOURTH  LECTURE 


Decamps  and  Diaz  may  be  fairly  held  within  the 
Barbizon  circle;  one  associated  with  the  place  itself , 
the  other  being  a precursor  and  in  personal  sympathy 
with  the  others.  Both  of  these  men  were  welcomed  by 
the  world , in  opposition  to  the  fortunes  of  Delacroix 
and  Millet.  Decamps  was  thereby  removed  from  sordid 
cares.  With  much  nobility  of  feeling  he  withdrew  awhile 
toward  the  end  of  his  career , with  regret  at  having 
been  too  easily  successful  and  to  prepare  for  more  seri- 
ous work.  His  beginnings : poor  teaching  in  part.  He 
begins  to  absorb , however , the  universal  teaching  of  art 
in  the  older  masters.  He  travels  in  Switzerland , in 
Italy , later  in  the  East.  His  first  impressions  there  are 
so  carried  out  with  certain  early  teachings  that  he 
forms  a distinct  manner , which  even  concealed  is  to  be 
discovered.  It  is  in  part  the  use  of  certain  great  lines 
of  division.  Later  he  felt  that  he  had  something  more 
to  say  than  the  things  by  which  he  had  acquired  respect- 
able fame  and  fortune.  His  attempts  that  way — which 
are  extraordinary  as  story , and  fine  as  feeling  and 
poetic  grasp — did  not  meet  the  public  at  once.  Mean- 
while, accident  closed  suddenly  his  career.  Diaz — suc- 
cessful as  being  always  liked  by  men  inside  and  out — not 
often  taken  seriously.  A natural  painter;  more  so  per- 
haps than  some  more  serious  artists.  His  work  has  also 
a charm  of  analogy  which  unites  it  to  that  of  the  men  he 
admired. 


FOURTH  LECTURE 


IN  this  lecture  I shall  speak  about  two  of  the  paint- 
ers wrho  may  be  fairly  held  within  the  “ Barbizon  99 
School:  one  intimately  associated  with  the  place  itself, 
and  the  other  connected  by  being  a precursor  and 
in  personal  sympathy  with  these  other  men.  These  then 
are  Decamps  and  Diaz.  You  will  remember  that  I was 
to  continue,  with  these  two  artists,  a consideration  of 
the  greater  precursor  Delacroix,  because  they  were  more 
or  less  connected  with  him,  by  intention,  by  manner,  and 
by  time.  Millet,  who  is  the  farthest  removed  from  Dela- 
croix, was  connected  by  sympathy,  by  admiration,  by 
the  fact  that  he  was  an  intimate  friend  of  other  men, 
who  were  connected  with  Delacroix ; but  he,  however  far 
away  in  feeling,  far  away  in  origin,  far  away  in  age, 
had  one  great  precursory  trait  in  common  with  Dela- 
croix, the  hatred  of  the  theatrical,  of  the  commonplace 
so-called  66  classical,”  in  the  making  of  what  he  did.  The 
theatrical  for  both  these  men,  in  different  ways,  was  an 
abhorrence.  Of  course  they  are  also  united  by  the  fact 

95 


FOURTH  LECTURE 


that  they  were  both  lofty  souls,  pure-minded  men ; that 
they  did  not  live  for  the  public ; that  they  followed  their 
own  lives  so  as  to  live  a clean  life,  free  from  what  they 
thought  diminished  the  value  of  man.  Of  course  their 
contempt  for  the  crowd  was  returned  by  the  crowd  for 
a long  time  with  more  or  less  indifference,  but  time 
usually  brings  in  the  mass  of  people;  and  prejudice, 
which  is  bad  in  one  way  is  good  in  another ; and  people 
who  would  never  have  known  of  either  of  these  men,  if 
they  had  had  to  discover  them,  admired  them  at  last. 

Conversely  to  the  opposition  encountered  by  Dela- 
croix, approval,  consequent  purchase,  and  still  further, 
freedom  from  sordid  care  was  the  part  of  Decamps  and 
Diaz,  who,  welcomed  by  the  crowd,  were  always  success- 
ful. That  these  men  had  also  some  touch  of  nobility  of 
character  is  emphasised  by  the  fact  that  this  successful 
man  Decamps  withdrew  while  at  the  end  of  his  life 
(he  died  in  1861),  with  a regret  at  having  been  too 
easily  successful,  and  a desire  to  prepare  himself  again 
for  another  career. 

He  was  younger  than  Delacroix ; born  on  the  44  third 
day  of  the  third  month  of  the  third  year  of  the  cen- 
tury,” as  he  himself  says : 44  That  was  the  only  remark- 
able thing  about  my  childhood.”  He  was  a rough  boy, 
difficult  to  manage,  fond  of  neither  reading  nor  writing, 

96 


FOURTH  LECTURE 

and  was  sent  out  into  the  country  to  be  got  rid  of. 
There,  paddling  in  the  river  water,  running  in  the 
woods,  burned  by  the  sun,  accustomed  to  do  without  hat 
or  shoe,  he  acquired  a love  for  rocks  and  woods  and 
pasture  that  brought  tears  to  his  eyes  when  he  was 
brought  back  to  school  and  had  to  learn  his  own  lan- 
guage again,  and  the  dreadful  Latin  grammar.  He  says 
that  he  66  resembled  a young  fox  tied  by  the  neck  to  the 
leg  of  a chair.” 

Thus  the  desire  to  record  those  things  that  he  loved 
took  hold  of  him  as  a child.  He  had  lost  them  and  he 
could  get  them  back  by  drawing.  He  was  hardly  out  of 
school  before  he  entered  the  studio  of  a worthy  but  in- 
different artist,  who,  however,  taught  him  some  geome- 
try, some  architecture  and  some  perspective,  upon  which 
materials  he  has  curiously  based  the  general  project  of 
almost  all  that  he  has  done,  however  much  it  may  be 
covered  up  by  the  story,  by  the  light  and  shade,  and 
by  a curious  appreciation  of  strange  and  far-away 
things.  He  then  tried  the  regular  studio  teachings  under 
an  excellent  master,  but  a gentle  and  too  kind  one,  who 
let  him  have  too  much  of  his  own  way ; and  he  was  bored, 
and  escaped,  and  lost  thereby  the  chance  of  that  fair 
discipline,  that  abandonment  of  one’s  self  to  the  neces- 
sary circumstances,  which,  of  course,  makes  part  of  any 

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education.  He  remained  to  a certain  extent  therefore 
uneducated,  though  he  is  a remarkable  executant  and 
almost  a great  painter.  Later  he  regretted  all  this,  as 
we  shall  see,  when  too  late.  He  happened  first  to  paint 
some  little  pictures,  was  at  once  successful  in  selling 
them,  and  he  gave  up  attempts  at  a more  serious  educa- 
tion. He  made  caricatures,  which  were  a fashion  of  the 
day;  little  hunting  scenes,  and  representations  of  such 
life  as  he  saw  about  him ; all  works  which  require  his 
further  fame  to  make  them  worthy  of  notice.  Lie  is  one 
of  that  great  army  of  illustrators  which  mark  the  nine- 
teenth, and  probably  will  continue  marking  the  twen- 
tieth century. 

But  as  he  looked  at  everything  and  at  pictures  also, 
he  began  to  absorb  the  universal  teachings  of  art.  He 
liked  the  old  painters,  the  old  masters,  and,  at  a great 
distance,  saw  the  greatness  of  Rembrandt.  Strangely, 
but  wisely,  another  of  his  great  admirations  was  Pous- 
sin, the  classical  image-maker,  the  refined  and  sometimes 
rather  dry  impersonator  of  a classical  dream  of  the 
Scriptures,  or  of  the  late  Roman  views  of  poetry.  Dela- 
croix had  already  begun  his  career  with  the  sudden  as- 
sertion of  the  great  painting  of  “ Dante  and  Virgil.” 
Just  at  that  time  Decamps,  who  admired  him,  managed 
to  be  able  to  travel  into  the  south  of  France,  a country 

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of  light  and  shade;  into  Switzerland  and  into  Italy.  In 
the  subjects  from  the  south  of  France  and  from  Italy 
which  began  his  career,  his  successful  career,  the  use  of 
the  geometrical  arrangement,  of  the  perpendicular  and 
horizontal,  of  the  great  cast  shadow,  all  of  which  marks 
him  in  all  that  he  does,  are  noticeable.  Whatever  he 
learned,  though  he  learned  so  little,  was  well  learned 
and  marked  throughout  his  whole  career.  The  same  ar- 
rangements, the  same  perpendiculars,  the  same  large  and 
small  openings,  the  sense  of  architecture,  the  sense  of 
construction,  mark  even  the  paintings  where  figures  are 
prominent;  and  the  figures,  though  they  are  very  im- 
portant, would  hardly  hold  without  the  great  lines  to 
place  them.  The  subjects  of  a single  figure  big  in  pro- 
portion to  the  rest  show  that  however  important  a 
figure,  however  it  tells  the  story,  it  is  really  a part  of 
the  story  of  all  these  great  lines.  Even  in  44  The  Shep- 
herd,” though  less  visible  than  in  other  examples,  you 
will  see  that  the  great  horizon  and  the  relative  perpen- 
dicular of  the  rocks  really  make  the  story,  and  the 
figures  would  have  been  placed  otherwise  in  any  way 
that  would  insist  upon  these  great  provisions.  In  that 
way  Decamps  is  almost  a great  man ; he  is  so  full  of  the 
origin  of  what  he  wishes  to  do,  and  he  so  contrives  to 
make  a picture  of  whatever  subject  he  tries.  It  becomes 

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FOURTH  LECTURE 


at  once  a balanced  whole,  a little  world,  with  all  its  parts 
interdependent.  And  if  in  “The  Smoker”  his  great  parti 
pris  is  not  quite  so  visible,  yet  the  moment  your  mind 
remembers  the  horizontal  and  perpendicular,  you  can 
see  again  that  the  seat,  and  the  chair,  the  steps,  the 
little  opening  above,  all  that  is  really  the  picture,  and 
that  the  man  is  arranged  to  fit  the  scene. 

These  two  pictures  are  the  reminiscences  of  his  Italian 
experience.  They  are  not  absolutely  of  that  one  date ; 
they  are  influenced  by  his  trip,  and  he  continued  for  a 
long  time  to  bring  in  these  reminiscences.  But  the  great 
thing  that  happened  to  him  was  to  have  been  a little 
later  in  the  East.  There  probably  began  the  desire  for 
an  expression  of  a beauty  in  the  use  of  great  lines ; 
a beauty  of  a certain  kind,  for  beauty  is  not  an  exact 
entity,  the  beauty  that  he  found  in  the  spread  of  the 
horizon,  in  large  spaces,  in  great  horizontals  broken 
by  abrupt  perpendiculars,  which  beauty  he  pursued 
throughout  the  remainder  of  his  life. 

He  had  already  learned  to  paint  in  a remarkable  way, 
and  had  begun  the  habit  of  painting  certain  comic  sub- 
jects, notably  the  placing  of  monkeys  in  the  characters 
of  men,  as  painters,  as  picture  experts,  as  cooks,  and  for 
a good  part  of  his  life  he  continued  in  this  small  vein, 
partly  out  of  fun,  partly  because  it  helped  him  to  study 

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FOURTH  LECTURE 

a technique  which  was  becoming  more  and  more  success- 
ful, and  also  because  it  brought  him  a great  deal  of 
money.  In  these  pictures  he  could  pursue  the  study  of 
light  and  shade  of  which  he  is  still  one  of  the  repre- 
sentatives, although  his  expression  of  these  mysteries  is 
narrower  than  what  greater  masters  have  accomplished. 
I have  shown  you  how  he  brought  back  from  the  East 
the  love  of  wide  horizons,  of  great  spaces  rather,  and 
developed  still  further  that  little  seed  of  geometry, 
architecture,  and  perspective,  by  which  he  began  as  a 
boy.  In  the  painting  known  as  the  “ Syrian  Landscape,” 
you  see  this  love  of  wide  horizons  and  great  spaces. 
There  in  the  East,  in  his  travels,  he  also  found  great 
shadows  cast  upon  blank  walls  upon  which  fell  a dazzling 
light.  Those  ancient  walls,  gilded  by  the  sunlight  of 
many  years,  showing  their  cement,  the  marble,  or  brick, 
or  stone  of  which  they  were  made,  blotched  with  moss 
and  pierced  with  narrow,  dark  holes  of  windows  or  of 
doors,  and  making  sudden  perpendiculars  upon  dry 
levels  of  pavements,  or  of  earth,  are  the  cornerstone  of 
his  pictures.  He  made  no  attempt  at  reproducing  all 
these  things  literally,  any  more  than  the  people  he 
placed  around  them  or  the  broken  skies  which  covered 
them.  Others  have  been  more  exact,  but  no  one  has  given 
the  unity  of  that  feeling  more  than  he  has ; and  as  he 

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FOURTH  LECTURE 


felt  thoroughly  the  difference  between  a picture  and  a 
study,  he  has  composed  with  clouds  and  trees  and  fig- 
ures, and  has  made  the  variations  of  his  atmosphere 
to  accentuate,  or  repeat,  the  main  impression  of  his  first 
aim.  You  can  see  then  in  the  “ Syrian  Landscape,”  for 
instance,  which  is  a fair  example  of  the  interdependence 
of  every  part,  how  the  clouds  are  chosen  for  those 
masses  of  trees,  for  the  horizon,  for  every  part ; the  sky 
is  a sky  arranged  by  him.  It  may  have  been  that  way,  or 
he  may  have  tried  to  see  it  that  way,  but  this  is  in  one 
sense  not  realism.  He  was  taken  in  his  day  for  a realist : 
and  in  a certain  way,  as  copier  of  a certain  part  of 
nature  which  he  used  to  play  with  and  make  his  picture 
of,  he  was  a realist ; but  he  is  not  a realist  at  all,  in  the 
sense  of  so  many  who  do  not  understand  that  a picture 
is  not  a piece  cut  out  of  nature  which  could  be  con- 
tinued indefinitely  if  you  had  an  order  for  a little  bit 
more  of  it ; but  that,  on  the  contrary,  it  is  a little  earth 
of  its  own,  a little  world  of  its  own,  every  part  of  which 
affects  every  other  part.  In  that  way  this  new  man  con- 
tinued the  older  tradition.  The  “ Turkish  Butcher,”  one 
of  his  typical  Eastern  pictures,  represents  the  extreme 
defects  and  qualities  of  his  work.  The  house  stands 
against  the  intense  blue  sky ; the  front  of  the  shop  pro- 
jecting, blazes  dully  in  the  white  sunlight;  a dog 

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FOURTH  LECTURE 

crouches  near  a mass  of  something,  a goat  is  fastened 
to  the  door  awaiting  its  fate;  bits  of  meat  from  which 
drip  blood  are  hung  on  the  line  of  spikes,  while  inside, 
the  butcher,  with  bare  arms,  leaning  against  the  wall, 
smokes  his  long  pipe.  The  light  is  powerful  but  oppres- 
sive, the  sweetness  of  the  sky  does  not  light  up  the 
shadows,  and  in  the  very  ugly  subject  one  feels  op- 
pressed and  troubled.  That  was  the  unbeautiful  side  of 
Decamps,  however  wonderful  the  work;  the  heaviness 
of  the  shadows,  the  fear  of  not  having  them  sufficiently 
indicated  as  cast,  the  anxiety  to  make  use  of  the  extraor- 
dinary technique  which  he  had  invented  for  represent- 
ing a wall,  the  surface  of  a wall,  or  the  surface  of  the 
earth;  a technique  not  absolutely  his  own,  for  he  must 
have  followed  to  some  extent  some  of  the  Dutch  paint- 
ers, or  the  Flemish — at  least  they  might  have  met  him 
halfway  and  given  him  the  clue  to  follow.  But  there  was 
another  reason  and  a strong  business  reason.  The  de- 
mand for  his  technique  was  great  in  these  particular 
things,  this  particular  kind  of  wall,  this  particular  kind 
of  cast  shadow,  this  look  of  solidity ; all  that  is  different 
from  what  other  men  did,  and  is  done  in  a peculiar  way. 
And  that  he  sold.  But  the  workman  has  often  covered  up 
the  poet  who  really  was  there,  and  the  impression  is 
rarely  quite  a pleasant  one.  But  the  impression  remains, 

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FOURTH  LECTURE 

and  it  is  difficult  to  forget  anything  important  of  his 
when  once  seen,  he  is  so  insistent  upon  the  points  he 
makes.  With  smaller  things  he  is  a little  the  victim  of 
his  time,  which  was  beginning  to  ask  for  the  machinery 
of  his  work  and  cared  little  for  much  else.  But,  whenever 
a higher  subject,  something  he  cared  for  more,  some- 
thing which  appealed  to  him,  took  hold  of  him,  then 
Decamps  became  more  than  a mere  executant,  and  in 
the  attempt  at  rendering  new  difficulties  he  moved  more 
easily.  That,  of  course,  you  all  know  is  the  type  of  the 
man  who  is  either  great,  or  might  be  great,  or  belongs 
anyhow  to  the  class  above.  That  is  to  say,  the  weight  of 
the  difficulty  is  the  reason  of  his  rising.  This  “ Le  Chas- 
seur ” is  again  one  of  the  fine  types  of  his  landscape 
painting.  It  does  not  matter  where  and  what  it  actually 
pictures,  but  we  feel  the  solidity  of  the  turf,  the  solidity 
of  the  rock,  the  solidity  of  the  path,  the  manner  in  which 
the  path  leads  up  to  the  woodland ; we  feel  the  air  mov- 
ing about  that  clump  of  trees ; we  see  how  the  horseman 
may  go  around  it ; we  feel  the  construction  he  had  put 
in,  in  the  way  in  which  an  architect,  if  he  built  with 
earth,  might  like  to  indicate;  you  can  see  that  nature 
may  have  given  that  long  sweep  of  trees  to  the  left,  but 
at  any  rate  he  put  it  in  such  a way  as  to  stop  his  picture 
without  your  thinking  it ; the  picture  stops  on  the  right, 

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FOURTH  LECTURE 

though  it  might  go  on  indefinitely.  He  has  arranged 
that  by  the  intersection  of  a few  lines.  The  whole  thing 
is  a masterpiece  of  engineering,  of  arrangement  of  lines, 
massed  shadow,  and  of  course,  as  I said  before,  it  is 
a reminiscence  of  his  early  training,  of  his  geometry,  of 
his  perspective,  of  all  that  first  beginning  which  showed 
him  what  things  were  made  of.  And  again,  the  sky 
above  may  have  been  like  that ; it  probably  was ; it  has 
no  appearance  of  having  been  invented.  At  any  rate  he 
has  thrown  it  right  in  where  it  would  hold  together  and 
strengthen  his  picture ; it  helps  the  solidity  of  the  earth, 
and  yet,  in  itself,  hangs  over,  instead  of  being  a drapery 
behind. 

So  in  the  “Turkish  Children  Coming  Out  of  School,” 
the  “ Children  Watching  a Tortoise,”  in  the  “ Watch  at 
Smyrna,”  the  difficulties  of  expressing  movement  and 
character  carried  him  with  them,  and  the  pictures  are, 
to  a certain  extent,  more  than  mere  records  of  a given 
story;  they  are  typical.  Nobody  will  ever  do  over  again 
the  subjects  of  Decamps. 

One  begins  to  feel  the  poet  who  more  and  more  dis- 
engaged himself  in  Decamps.  The  great  landscapes,  the 
“ Syrian  Landscape,”  the  “ Diogenes,”  the  “ Muses,” 
blend  together  his  great  observation  of  nature  and  the 
desire  to  make  a synthesis,  what  we  call  a picture.  “ The 

105 


FOURTH  LECTURE 


Tower  of  Bordeaux,”  which  I think  is  tolerably  dis- 
agreeable, is  a thing  that  some  of  us  may  have  seen  at 
Bordeaux  in  the  Crypt,  where  certain  dead  bodies  are 
shown  in  this  state,  and  we  all  know  that  things  of 
that  kind  impress  the  public,  who  always  like  to  have 
something  horrible  at  times,  but  I think  we  could  do 
without  it  and  see  something  a little  more  poetic.  Again, 
the  “ Porte  de  Ferme  ” is  singularly  personal,  but  it  is 
not  an  imitation  of  nature.  I think  you  can  see  in  it  the 
points  I mark,  the  use  of  the  background  and  the  seat 
and  the  door  and  the  woman,  whatever  is  there,  the 
horizontal  and  perpendicular  to  confine  it  within  the  line 
of  the  picture.  When  you  think  of  the  way  Millet  does 
the  same  subject,  you  realise  that  this  work  of  Decamps 
is  not  exactly  great  work.  But  there  it  is,  and  it  has  its 
character.  There  are  “ The  Witches,”  a work  of  great 
importance  in  his  own  mind.  It  has  the  element  of  good 
taste  and  is  well  worth  seeing;  intersection  of  lines 
again,  so  carefully  used  you  can  hardly  realise  how  very 
important  those  few  horizontals  are.  Then  again  we 
come  to  the  greater  landscape,  that  “ Syrian  Land- 
scape ” which  we  saw,  I think  can  be  called  one  of  these. 
The  “ Muses,”  in  which  again  the  figures  are  used  sim- 
ply to  charm  you  with  a little  look  of  motion,  or  a little 
look  of  passing,  or  moving,  and  are  still  merely  orna- 

106 


FOURTH  LECTURE 


ments  in  the  general  arrangement  of  the  picture;  but 
they  have,  with  the  picture,  a sense  of  peace,  a sense  of 
far  away,  and  also  a sense  of  having  been  seen.  The 
composition,  however  simple,  however  child-like,  is  not 
easily  deciphered.  You  do  not  see  why  he  placed  his  fig- 
ures that  way  unless  you  think  of  the  clues  I gave,  the 
clue  of  the  great  horizontal. 

To  the  people  of  his  time  he  must  have  seemed  some- 
thing of  a realist.  In  reality,  notwithstanding  his  ex- 
traordinary power  of  copying  nature,  he  never  did 
otherwise  than  use  it  to  record  an  impression  he  had  re- 
ceived; and  in  certain  cases  his  pictures,  deficient  as 
they  may  be,  are  final  types  of  the  particular  subject. 
The  “ Turkish  Cavalry  Passing  a Ford  99  is  a beautiful 
example  of  what  I mean.  The  Oriental  subject  has  given 
him  choice  of  colour  and  form  and  of  a certain  indi- 
vidual movement  for  each  rider.  The  picture  might 
easily  be  called  “ The  Passing  of  the  Ford.”  The  gen- 
eral movement  of  the  horses  treading  their  way;  the 
stepping  out  on  dry  land,  and  the  drawing  up  when 
landed,  are  given  in  five  single  figures  whose  separate 
movements  make  one  combined  motion.  There  may  be 
one  hundred  before  or  one  hundred  after,  or  only  those 
few,  but  the  movement  would  be  the  same ; and  one  feels 
that  the  picture  is  the  story  of  the  movement. 

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FOURTH  LECTURE 

The  absence  of  continuous  early  study,  and  the  desire 
of  making  that  study  for  himself  and  not  for  what  is 
called  success,  began  to  trouble  him  as  an  older  man,  to 
whom  a larger  view  of  the  world  and  greater  sympathy 
of  humanity  had  come.  And  so  when  his  education  by 
life  made  him  desirous  of  a greater  expression,  when  the 
intension  of  his  work  grew  larger  and  the  human  story 
he  tried  to  tell  more  subtle  or  more  intense,  or  more  full 
of  feeling,  then  the  narrowness  of  his  very  successful 
and  very  splendid  work  could  not  fit  (and  he  saw  it),  his 
newer  and  greater  ambitions.  It  is  infinitely  to  his 
credit  that  he  perceived  this,  and  infinitely  to  his  credit 
that  the  great  public  are  scarcely  aware  of  what  De- 
camps could  have  done. 

Accident  closed  his  career  at  the  moment  I am  de- 
scribing, but  already  he  had  shown  in  his  painting  the 
beginning  of  a larger  life  by  the  suggestion  of  a story 
in  the  landscape  which  represents  “ Christ  Crossing  the 
Lake  of  Genesareth.”  It  is  what  we  saw  before,  a lake, 
a beautiful  lake,  nothing  more,  with  high  hills;  but 
somehow  or  other,  you  feel  that  the  little  bark  that 
crosses  it  is  so  important  that  there  must  be  a story  in 
it.  There  is  no  other  point  indicated ; it  is  hardly  visible, 
but  in  some  subtle  way  the  painter  has  managed,  by  the 
use  of  all  the  lines,  to  place  at  one  moment  of  motion  the 

108 


FOURTH  LECTURE 


most  important  line,  and  that  one  is  that  of  the  little 
bark.  He  had  begun  to  be  something  more  than  a re- 
markable painter,  and  his  imagination  asked  for  the 
record  of  great  impressions. 

The  great  sketch  of  the  “ Defeat  of  the  Cimbri  by 
Marius  ” is  a proof  of  what  he  had  hoped  to  do.  It  is 
the  representation  of  any  great  struggle,  in  which  a 
vast  multitude  charging  against  a smaller  number  on 
a well-chosen  point  of  vantage,  are  driven  back  by  an 
orderly  counter-charge.  One  can  see  the  story  without 
knowing  who  these  people  are ; one  can  see  on  which  side 
victory  must  settle.  The  spread  of  landscape  is  extraor- 
dinary, as  well  as  the  impression  of  the  quantity  of 
combatants.  According  to  his  principle,  which  is  that 
of  the  great  masters,  and  which  the  group  of  artists  to 
which  he  belongs,  however  diverse,  have  always  kept, 
the  movement  of  the  clouds  and  of  light  and  of  shade 
on  the  great  line  of  the  earth  are  all  one  with  the  move- 
ment of  the  figures.  This  view  of  art  is  absolutely  dif- 
ferent from  the  modern  realistic  notion  of  a possible 
separation  of  the  meaning  of  the  picture  and  of  the 
possible  facts.  For  every  one  knows  that  the  weather 
may  contradict  absolutely  what  man  feels  or  suffers. 
It  is  the  province  of  art  to  bring  these  things  together, 
whether  it  be  in  the  hands  of  Beethoven  or  Shakespeare, 

109 


FOURTH  LECTURE 


or  any  of  the  painters  who  are  more  than  mere  copyists. 
We  all  know  that  nature  is  separate  from  us ; does  not 
sympathise  with  us;  cares  very  little  what  happens  to 
us,  or  may  happen ; in  art  we  give  it  a meaning,  and  in 
that  way  realism,  absolute  realism,  if  such  a thing  is 
possible,  would  be  the  most  absurd  of  all  representa- 
tions. In  this  picture,  as  in  a great  many  of  Decamps, 
there  is  still  too  great  use  of  artifice  or  tricks,  which  he 
learned  in  beginning  to  do  things  for  the  public;  that 
of  using  some  foreground  matter,  whether  rock  or  tree, 
or  in  this  case  some  of  the  fugitives,  as  a theatrical  ac- 
cessory to  push  back  the  rest  of  his  picture.  For  De- 
camps was  the  victim  of  his  tricks ; so  completely  indeed 
that  notwithstanding  his  affiliations  and  his  many  ad- 
mirations, he  never  quite  understood  the  translation 
of  colour,  and  light,  and  atmosphere  into  gradations  of 
light  and  dark,  which  is  the  essential  mechanism  of 
painting,  and  which  was  the  shibboleth  of  the  school  to 
which  he  really  in  nowise  belonged. 

Corot  represents  that  conclusively.  Corot  represents 
what  the  painters  know  as  the  doctrine  of  “ values,”  the 
great  battle-ground  of  the  last  century,  and  which  has 
remained  to  us  more  or  less  unsettled.  That  is,  the  trans- 
lation of  whatever  one  sees  into  a certain  proportion  of 
dark  and  light  according  to  the  tone  and  general  in- 

110 


FOURTH  LECTURE 

tention  of  the  artificial  picture ; the  translation  of  the 
light  and  dark  in  any  particular  tone  in  the  real  pic- 
ture, either  imagined  or  seen,  into  a relative  quantity 
of  light  and  dark  in  the  other.  In  this  case  then  the 
colours,  as  we  call  them,  are  merely  representatives  of 
light  and  dark. 

Now  Decamps,  as  you  will  see  by  the  few  examples 
that  you  have  about  you  here  (and  there  are  a good 
many  in  the  United  States,  but  scattered),  Decamps 
never  thoroughly  understood  that  before.  He  never 
felt  it.  He  had  so  bound  himself  to  success  by  the 
exaggeration  of  light  and  dark  at  all  hazards  to 
make  his  perpendiculars,  as  we  have  seen,  count 
with  the  great  shadows ; to  make  his  horizontals  count, 
that  it  was  necessary  then  to  follow  this  thought 
and  get  at  any  rate  the  main  element  of  his  pictorial 
world. 

The  Samson  series,  with  which  I shall  conclude,  are 
no  more  than  drawings.  He  had  hoped  for  encourage- 
ment; he  had  hoped  for  a long  life.  He  was  a healthy 
man,  had  been  a healthy  man,  fond  of  exercise,  fairly 
rich,  having  a great  deal  of  time  on  his  hands,  and  dis- 
couraged by  nothing  else  than  that  he  felt  how  so  far 
he  had  not  been  strictly  educated,  but  that  he  was  still 
young  enough  to  learn — every  man  who  is  worth  any- 

111 


FOURTH  LECTURE 


thing  feels  something  like  this — and  that  he  had  some- 
thing more  to  say  than  these  things  by  which  he  had 
acquired  his  fortune.  But  in  the  first  place  the  public 
did  not  care  for  these  new  sketches  and  smaller  paint- 
ings and  drawings  which  he  began  to  do.  In  the  next 
place  he  himself  had  so  tied  himself  in  his  habits  that 
as  soon  as  he  began  to  try  to  break  away  from  them  the 
result  was  disagreeable,  distressing  to  the  public,  who, 
not  knowing  exactly  what  he  was  after,  only  saw  that 
the  man  was  not  expressing  what  he  really  meant,  that 
something  in  the  work  was  a failure.  That  began  about 
1857,  at  which  time  I remember  the  very  things  quite 
well,  and  I remember  the  sadness  of  his  friends,  I re- 
member the  impression  of  doubt  that  came  upon  us  as 
to  whether  the  man  had,  as  they  said,  lost  his  powers. 
He  had  only  a few  more  years  to  live,  though  he  died  by 
accident. 

The  Samson  series  are  nothing  but  drawings,  but 
they  are  extraordinary  in  their  scope.  One  realises  how 
later,  and  very  soon  after,  Gustave  Dore  absorbed  some 
of  the  system  laid  out  in  these  great  drawings.  And 
there  are  also  some  Turners  which  are  analogous.  They 
are  skillful  and  balanced  in  arrangement ; but  this  in- 
tensifies the  imagination  implied.  In  the  “ Samson 
Watching  the  Fires  Which  he  has  Lit,”  the  central, 

112 


FOURTH  LECTURE 

solitary  figure  of  Samson,  sitting  with  foot  in  hand,  is 
evidently  the  cause  of  the  entire  picture. 

So  in  the  tragic  story  of  “ Samson  at  the  Mill.”  The 
hopeless  solitude  of  this  mutilated  giant  treading  his 
enforced  round  under  the  stick  of  the  guard  is  made  to 
tell  a story  of  continuous  work  by  the  figure  of  the 
rat  basking  in  the  sun’s  rays  that  fall  into  the  mill. 
And  in  “ Samson  Breaking  His  Bonds,”  one  feels 
the  quiet  of  the  night,  out  of  which  Samson  leaps 
at  the  cry  of  Delilah,  all  the  more  on  account  of  the 
quiet  pattern  of  moonlight  which  falls  on  the  floor  of 
the  room. 

Now  in  this  one  of  the  beautiful  stories  in  which  he 
has  used  his  experience  of  the  East,  he  has  used  his  love 
of  the  great  horizons ; he  has  used  the  pleasure  of  com- 
position and  the  reminiscence  of  many  studies  to  remind 
one  of  a biblical  story.  It  is  <fi  Joseph  sold  by  his  breth- 
ren.” On  the  right  you  will  see  the  well  from  which  he 
has  been  sold.  It  is  as  identical  as  if  Decamps  has  said  to 
himself : “ Why  the  story  is  what  I have  seen  over  and 
over  again.  I have  seen  slaves  handed  out  to  the  cara- 
vans ” ; and  he  has  simply  added  to  that  a certain  kind 
of  feeling,  and  he  has  clarified  it  and  made  it  bold  by  the 
artificial  composition  in  great  lines,  the  great  solidity 
of  earth,  the  indifferent  looks  cf  the  beasts ; and  above 

113 


FOURTH  LECTURE 

is  one  cloud  balancing  over  the  entire  meaning  of  the 
picture. 

These  signs  of  a greater  development  in  our  painter 
were  not  received  by  his  admirers  with  equal  satisfac- 
tion, nor  were  most  of  them  capable  of  feeling  the  poetic 
influence  that  animated  him.  That  assertion  of  the 
value  of  the  mind  was  unpleasant  to  the  men  of  the 
“ school  ” and  to  the  men  of  the  school  who  still  felt 
kindly  toward  Decamps  and  contrariwise;  the  mere  ad- 
mirers of  technique  felt  intensely  doubtful,  as  always, 
for  what  Decamps  might  have  been  is  still  unsettled.  A 
successful  man  otherwise,  he  had  retired  to  live  peace- 
ably in  Barbizon  and  to  prepare  himself  for  his  new 
fields.  There,  in  one  of  his  rides  through  the  forest,  he 
was  thrown  against  a tree  and  died  from  the  effects  of 
the  blow  in  August,  1861. 

The  Barbizon  school  is,  as  we  are  agreed  to  under- 
stand, a mere  convenient  way  of  remembering  a number 
of  men  whose  great  characteristic  is  their  personality, 
and  who,  consequently,  are  properly  not  a school.  They 
represent  almost  all  the  tendencies  of  painters  except 
the  strictly  academic.  There  can  be  no  better  illustration 
of  the  diversity  of  their  aims  and  of  their  sympathies 
than  the  fact  that  they  all  liked  and  sometimes  admired 


114 


FOURTH  LECTURE 

one  of  the  men  whose  name  is  joined  with  theirs:  Diaz, 
properly,  Narciso  Diaz  de  la  Pena.  This  general  good 
will  has  always  followed  his  work.  I dare  say  that  all 
of  you  have  the  same  feeling.  It  was  liked  and  bought 
by  many  who  were  rebuffed  by  the  severe  intentions  of 
the  other  painters,  his  friends,  or  by  their  passionate 
love  of  nature,  which  in  him  was  the  passionate  love  of 
painting.  It  is  this  charming  proof  of  being  born  for 
it  which  has  given  to  his  reputation  a seriousness  that 
even  his  admirers  will  not  desire  to  insist  upon.  There 
was  also  this,  that  he  was  an  admirer  of  the  works  of 
other  Barbizon  painters,  and  helped  the  men  whose  lives 
and  works  we  are  now  considering.  For  some  of  them 
he  had  more  than  appreciation,  he  had  enthusiastic  ad- 
miration ; his  imitation  of  their  ways  of  looking  at  na- 
ture, his  use  of  as  many  of  their  qualities  as  he  could 
make  acceptable  to  his  public  and  to  his  practical  good 
sense,  have  given  to  much  of  his  work  a charm  of 
analogy  which  runs  it  into  theirs  as  if  he  had  had  the 
same  intention. 

He  was  born  early  in  the  century,  probably  in  1809 ; 
a Spaniard,  the  son  of  two  Spanish  exiles  who  had  fled 
from  Spain  in  the  terrible  days  of  the  invasion  of  Na- 
poleon. He  remained  a Spaniard  in  so  far  that  the  an- 
cestral love  of  power,  of  tone,  and  of  colour  never  gave 

115 


FOURTH  LECTURE 

way  to  the  dry  cleverness  that  might  have  marked  a 
similar  French  mind.  Clever  he  was,  but  always  within 
the  lines  of  a real  painter,  of  a man  delighting  in  ex- 
ternal shapes,  and  in  the  beauty  of  the  material  in  which 
he  worked.  Thereby  he  and  the  men  of  the  Barbizon 
school,  notwithstanding  their  not  being  absolutely  per- 
fect painters,  differ  from  many  of  the  men,  not  only  of 
their  own  day,  but  of  a later  time,  who  never  seem  to 
understand  that  a painting  ought  to  be  properly  a 
pleasant  surface  to  look  at. 

Diaz’s  father  seems  to  have  disappeared,  and  his 
mother  took  care  of  him  long  enough  to  reach  Paris 
from  Bordeaux  in  a long,  toilsome  pilgrimage.  She  had 
worked  as  a teacher,  earning  enough  for  the  simple  sup- 
port of  herself  and  her  child,  whom  she  left  at  her  death, 
when  he  was  ten  years  old,  in  charge  of  the  kind  Protes- 
tant pastor  Paira. 

Paira  took  care  of  the  boy,  and  may  have  given  him, 
moreover,  some  book  education,  but  allowed  him  an 
extraordinary  amount  of  freedom  in  his  rambles  in  the 
country  about  Paris.  There  one  fine  day,  after  playing, 
young  Diaz  fell  asleep  in  the  grass  and  was  apparently 
bitten  by  a viper.  His  wound  was  badly  treated  by  some 
kind  villager,  and  the  result  was  that  the  boy  had  to 
lose  a leg  after  months  of  suffering,  entering  life  dis- 

116 


FOURTH  LECTURE 

abled,  but  still  with  a natural  cheerfulness  which  made 
him  always  refer  to  his  wooden  leg  as  somewhat  of  a 
joke.  He  was  apprenticed  to  porcelain  painting  in  the 
company  of  other  boys,  since  famous,  among  them  Jules 
Dupre,  Cabat,  the  distinguished  landscape  painter,  and 
a famous  illustrator,  Raffet,  a really  great  man  in  this 
smaller  way. 

The  boy  adored  the  theatre;  at  the  same  time  he  be- 
gan an  admiration  for  Delacroix  which  influenced  his 
entire  life.  He  tried  to  study  somewhat,  notably  under  a 
man  little  remembered,  but  who  seems  to  have  taught  him 
well  enough,  and  who  also  helped  him  by  negotiating  the 
sale  of  his  first  little  pictures,  “ which  he  produced,” 
said  this  master  of  his,  56  as  an  apple-tree  bears  apples.” 
It  was  fortunate  that  they  dropped  off  so  easily,  for 
they  brought  small  prices ; a dollar  to  five  dollars  seems 
to  have  been  the  average  of  payment,  but  even  then  the 
Sancho  Panza  side  of  our  Spaniard  enabled  him  to  put 
aside  money,  and  to  trade  successfully ; and  he  seems  to 
have  slipped  rapidly  into  the  manufacture  of  every  kind 
of  pretty  thing  which  would  sell,  and  yet  satisfy  sufficient- 
ly his  love  of  the  beautiful  surfaces  and  shapes  and  pat- 
terns that  painting  gives.  Therefore  it  is  impossible  to 
be  severe  with  him  and  measure  him  by  the  same  rule  we 
apply  to  men  with  either  real  or  assumed  seriousness. 

117 


FOURTH  LECTURE 

He  began  to  be  an  example  of  a habit  which  since  his 
day  has  extended  enormously  among  artists.  That  is 
to  say,  collectorship,  or  the  accumulation  of  things  sup- 
posed to  be  precious,  what  is  roughly  called  in  the  shops 
“ antiques,”  and  what  we  call  “ bric-a-brac.”  The  middle 
years  of  Diaz’s  life  witnessed  the  development  of  this 
modern  mania,  fostered  by  many  noble  impulses ; no- 
tably a turning  back  to  the  story  of  the  past  by  the 
writers  of  England,  Germany,  and  France,  and  through 
the  better  knowledge  of  foreign  countries,  and  of  history 
in  general  and  the  history  of  art  in  particular.  But  for 
all  that  it  has  become  a disease  even  with  people  who  are 
not  artists,  and  who  have  more  right  to  indulge  in 
miscellaneous  and  haphazard  admiration.  Diaz  then  ap- 
pears also  to  have  been  a little  of  a dealer,  which  is  the 
not  nice  side  of  the  collector,  but  which  is  his  danger. 
Nor  would  all  this  be  worth  noticing  were  it  not  one  of 
the  special  marks  of  the  time  and  thereby  a form  of  his- 
torical statement — the  result  of  our  time. 

The  paintings  of  our  artist  became  richer  in  material 
and  in  study,  and  worth  more  as  he  obtained  higher 
prices.  With  all  his  shrewdness  he  was  not  the  man  to 
trade  on  a past  reputation,  and  later  in  life  he  even  made 
some  seriously  grave  mistakes  in  his  work,  owing  to  a 
misplaced  desire  to  give  more  serious  results.  He  painted 

118 


FOURTH  LECTURE 


a great  deal  from  the  nude,  continuing  as  well  his  land- 
scape studies,  which  helped  him  to  give  to  his  light  and 
fantastic  figures  a setting  with  some  foundation  of 
reality.  As  I have  said,  he  was  a passionate  admirer  of 
Rousseau  and  of  Dupre  for  landscapes,  as  he  was  also 
of  Delacroix  and  Correggio,  for  he  took  only  the  best 
of  everything  for  his  little  manufactured  world. 

This  picture,  the  66  Descent  of  the  Bohemians,”  is  a 
famous  one,  one  by  which  he  established  his  reputation. 
But  where  is  the  scene  of  the  forest  and  trees  that  he 
felt ' and  which,  alas ! the  black  and  white  does  not  ren- 
der ? In  others  of  his  works  we  shall  see  more  distinctly 
the  meaning  through  the  black  and  white,  and  we  will 
also  see  a certain  seriousness  which  must  have  come  to 
him  from  other  men.  There  is  the  “Fountainebleau  For- 
est,” which  was  brought  to  America  by  one  of  our  earli- 
est collectors,  the  late  August  Belmont.  It  is  the  same 
forest  in  which  he  was  fostered  and  where  the  others 
would  often  go.  Here  it  is  not  a serious  affair  like  those 
of  his  friends,  but  it  is,  as  you  see,  charming ; it  gives 
you  a succession  of  woods  and  of  all  sorts  of  things. 
How  good  it  must  be,  when  we  think  we  miss  all  the 
colour,  his  charming  colour. 

That  again  (referring  to  another  picture),  is  more 
real,  more  a study,  like  those  of  his  friends,  and  it  is  for 

119 


FOURTH  LECTURE 


all  that  a picture ; it  is  not  a mere  study.  There  is  some- 
thing, I think,  quite  charming,  called  “ Les  Odalisques,” 
half-way  between  a sketch  and  a painting,  a composi- 
tion, an  historical  subject,  and  a beautiful  artistic 
result;  purely  artistic.  We  see  a great  “chef,”  good 
things  cooking,  and  yet  with  a sense  of  delicacy  of 
feeling,  of  treatment.  I used  the  word  cook ; I remember 
a statement  from  an  important  artist  with  regard  to 
Diaz  and  Rousseau.  It  was  a statement  made  to  me,  a 
student,  by  my  master,  Couture,  whose  specialty,  and 
a useful  one  at  times,  was  the  saying  of  disagreeable 
things  about  other  artists.  And  he,  with  a justice  that  I 
shall  try  to  explain  afterward,  but  which  was  a result 
of  jealousy,  the  jealousy  of  a smaller  man,  said  to  me: 
“ Well,  for  an  artist,  between  Rousseau  and  Diaz,  give 
me  Diaz.  Rousseau  is  a cook  sent  out  to  market,  bring- 
ing in  everything  that  is  there ; vegetables,  leg  of  mut- 
ton, carrots,  all  that  is  piled  in  the  basket  just  as  it 
comes  from  Nature  and  that  is  all  there  is  to  it.  It  is 
Nature,  if  you  like.  Now  Diaz  is  a 4 chef.’  Out  of  all 
these  things  he  makes  a mess  nice  to  the  taste,  and  you 
have  not  got  the  sense  of  the  cook  bringing  in  the  things 
any  longer.”  There  was  in  this  criticism  a justifiable 
remark  in  the  abstract,  that  is  to  say,  that  the  render- 
ing, the  mere  copying  of  Nature,  is  not  the  realm  of 

120 


DECAMPS 

THE  SMOKER” 


FROM  LITHOGRAPH  BY  J.  LAURENS 


ASIA  MINOR” 


BY  J. 


DECAMPS 

A STREET  IN  SMYRNA ” 


THE  LOUVRE 


DECAMPS 

ITALIAN  SUBJECT” 


FROM  LITHOGRAPH  BY  C.  NANTEUIL 


DECAMPS 

“LE  CHASSEUR” 


FROM  LITHOGRAPH  BY  FRANCA  IS 


DECAMPS:  “LA  SORTIE  DE  L’ECOLE  TURQUE 


DECAMPS:  “THE  TOWER  OF  BORDEAUX 


DECAMPS 

“PORTE  DE  FERME ” 

NOW  IN  THE  COLLECTION  OF  JOHN  W.  SIMPSON 

(from  A lithograph) 


WITCHES’ 


LE  ROUX 


FROM  LITHOGRAPH  BY  EUGENIO  LE  ROUX 


go 

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JAMES  J.  IIIEL 


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DIAZ 

DESCENT  OF  THE  BOHEMIANS” 


BOSTON  MUSEUM 


DIAZ:  “A  POND  IN  FONTAINEBLEAU  FOREST ” 


DIAZ:  “TURKISH  WOMEN  IN  LANDSCAPE 


FOURTH  LECTURE 

art;  and  it  was  unjust,  of  course,  to  Rousseau.  We 
know  that  he  was  not  a copyist.  That  he  had  in  so  far 
to  copy,  because  he  fell  in  love  with  each  theme,  one 
after  the  other ; he  was  simply  in  love  with  the  mother 
earth;  everything  was  precious  to  him;  everything  was 
worth  rendering;  but  he  still  had  the  love  of  the  old 
masters,  the  love  of  that  good  sense  which  feels  strongly 
that  form  has  to  be  given  to  one’s  imagination.  I only 
quote  the  saying  as  a mark  of  how,  in  the  first  place, 
Rousseau  was  antagonised ; how  Diaz  was  loved  anyhow, 
by  anyone,  all  through,  and  never  an  object  of  jealousy. 
The  explanation  is  evident,  and  it  is  painful  to  think 
that  a man  of  some  importance  like  Couture  could  de- 
mean himself  in  teaching  the  wrong  thing  to  a pupil, 
and  a pupil  in  whom  he  believed. 

As  I have  said,  all  these  things  are  more  or  less  charm- 
ing, being  more  or  less  anything.  Nymphs,  Dianas, 
Venuses,  women  bathing,  cupids  and  children,  and  every 
variety  of  real  or  imaginary  costume,  Oriental  subjects 
(because  they  could  be  made  splendid),  all  these  are 
subjects  of  this  fascinating  nonsense.  And  as  it  is  non- 
sense, there  is  no  suggestion  of  harm  in  the  nudest 
images  or  most  mythological  subjects  that  he  ever 
painted.  He  might  have  introduced  a murder — he  would 
if  it  would  have  sold — but  nothing  is  in  the  least  harm- 

121 


FOURTH  LECTURE 


ful  in  anything  that  he  ever  painted.  In  fact  there  seems 
to  have  been  nothing  in  the  man’s  mind  which  was  not 
kindly  and  generous. 

These  pretty  objects  were  sought  on  every  hand,  by 
the  dealers,  and  the  actresses  and  actors,  bankers  and 
bankers’  wives,  by  all  connected  with  the  stock-market, 
as  they  call  it,  as  well  as  by  other  artists  and  graver  stu- 
dents. And  occasionally  when  this  man  has  felt  like 
bestowing  much  time  and  attention  on  these  little  treas- 
ures, they  have  the  similitude  of  great  work  and  are  les- 
sons also  in  the  possibilities  of  painting. 

Once  only  and  at  the  end,  possibly  out  of  good  na- 
ture, out  of  the  love  for  his  fellow-artists,  out  of  the 
love  for  what  he  hoped  was  a nice  ambition,  perhaps  also 
to  pay  off  a mortgage  on  the  house,  because  he  spent 
money  and  lived  nicely,  he  painted  certain  things 
which  were  more  tawdry,  which  were  thinner,  which 
were  weaker  were  less  valuable  in  every  way  than 
those  in  which  he  had  attempted  nothing.  This  is  al- 
most an  approach  to  some  of  his  monetary  affairs. 
There  is  a look  as  if  he  had  attempted  to  be  still 
more  pleasing  to  others  and  said : “ Well  if  you  like 
6 spirits,’  like  these  things,  I too  can  do  it.  It  is  no  more 
difficult.” 

There  is  little  more  to  say  about  him  except  to  insist 

122 


FOURTH  LECTURE 

upon  the  help  which  he  extended  to  those  fellow-artists 
whom  we  are  considering,  and  who  often  needed  a more 
practical  mind,  some  one  to  help  them  in  their  business 
relations,  for  which  they  were  less  fitted  than  this  sensi- 
ble man.  He  had  retired  in  1856  to  Barbizon,  had  also  a 
house  near  the  sea,  and  died  of  some  form  of  consump- 
tion in  1876,  with  the  great  regret  of  painters  as  differ- 
ent as  Meissonier  and  Dupre,  who  were  his  pall-bearers. 
Dupre,  always  a silent  man,  had  been  silent  during  the 
funeral ; he  said  as  he  left : “ The  sun  has  lost  one  of 
its  most  beautiful  rays.” 


123 


FIFTH  LECTURE 


With  Rousseau  and  Dupre  we  touch  the  reasons  of 
the  name  of  the  Barbizon  school.  They  are  essentially 
landscape  painters.  Corot  influenced  by  the  “ human 
form  divine”  Rousseau' s origin  and  education:  the  lat- 
ter a poor  one.  He  with  the  others , Dupre  for  instance , 
feels  early  the  influence  of  the  earlier  masters.  The 
Dutch , the  Italians.  These  young  men  appeared  to  be 
revolutionists , being  very  conservative.  All  the  more 
they  were  opposed.  Extreme  sincerity  and  simplicity  of 
Rousseau.  His  wish  to  represent  the  entirety  of  his 
sight  and  still  to  be  within  the  limit  of  conventional  art 
— what  we  call  a picture.  His  saying  that  he  would  have 
liked  to  devote  himself  to  the  creation  of  one  sole  and 
unique  painting. 

Analogies  of  Dupre , his  friend , and  of  Daubigny. 
The  record  of  all  these  men  is  a lesson  to  students  in 
this , that  the  consideration  of  great  artists  as  repre- 
sentatives of  problems , puts  aside  the  idea  of  imitation 
of  formulae. 


FIFTH  LECTURE 


YOU  will  remember  that  in  our  last  lecture  we 
were  still  in  the  division  of  the  precursors, 
of  the  teachers  and  founders  of  the  general  direction 
to  which  the  name  of  Barbizon  school  has  been  given. 
It  is  almost  a pity  that  that  name  should  be  con- 
tinued by  habit,  and  if  it  were  possible  to  break  it 
we  would  have  a more  reasonable  and  also  in  reality  a 
more  poetic  form  of  nomenclature.  With  the  men  of 
whom  I shall  speak  to-day  we  come  more  distinctly  into 
the  reason  of  this  misnomer.  With  the  names  of  Rous- 
seau and  Dupre  we  touch  more  closely  the  reasons  which 
give  to  our  group  of  painters  the  name  of  the  Barbi- 
zon school.  These  two  men  are  essentially  landscape 
painters,  with  no  influence  of  the  human  figure  in  their 
work,  such  as  we  feel  in  Corot,  for  instance,  who,  by  the 
by,  became  a wonderful  painter  of  the  human  figure. 

I mean  by  the  influence  of  the  human  figure,  not  only 
the  mere  question  of  the  introduction  of  the  human 
figure  as  part  of  the  picture,  or  as  a recall,  somehow 
or  other  of  the  school,  or  as  a recall  to  art  of  the  same 

127 


FIFTH  LECTURE 


kind  that  exists  in  the  pictures,  I mean  that  particular 
influence  which  study  of  the  human  body  gives  to  the 
artist.  It  should  permeate  in  reality  his  entire  work. 
It  fits,  somehow  or  other,  the  work  to  the  scale  of  man. 
The  curves  become  those  of  the  body,  or  those  that  the 
body  describes.  Thereby,  perhaps,  it  is  a more  logical, 
a more  reasonable,  a more  philosophic  proportion  than 
the  mere  abstract  look  at  outside  Nature,  which  is  per- 
haps too  much  akin  to  the  view  of  the  photograph.  It  is 
of  no  consequence  to  us  that  the  view  which  the  artist 
takes  of  Nature  should  be  unprejudiced.  We  do  not  ask 
that  of  him.  On  the  contrary,  we  wish  him  to  be  prej- 
udiced as  much  as  he  can  make  it  beautiful  or  advan- 
tageous to  be  so.  If  he  is  prejudiced  he  has  an  inherit- 
ance, and  his  inheritance  cannot  be  too  rich.  It  is  the 
part  of  him  which  he  does  not  know  of,  which  is  the 
important  part.  The  part  he  knows  of,  his  training,  his 
reasoning,  the  result  of  his  studies,  are  rather  the 
rudder,  the  governing  machine  of  what  he  does. 

Now  in  Corot,  for  instance,  we  have  a view  of  Nature 
which  is  constantly  steeped  in  that  peculiar  influence 
inseparable  from  the  love  of  the  human  form.  That  is  to 
say,  he  is  a composer,  a builder  of  proportion,  even 
though  the  apparent  record  is  only  that  of  a landscape 
at  a given  time  of  day. 


128 


FIFTH  LECTURE 

I have  to  refer  to  other  men,  but  you  know  all  these 
men,  you  know  them  all,  you  have  them  here  in  this  very 
building,  you  have  them  in  the  city.  If  you  move  to  any 
of  our  great  cities  you  have  them  again.  The  shops  have 
them,  the  imitations  of  them ; forgeries  fill  galleries  and 
shops  throughout  the  world,  especially  with  these  three 
or  four  names,  Rousseau,  Dupre,  Corot,  Daubigny. 

With  Rousseau  the  love  is  not  of  the  human  form 
divine — it  is  of  earth  and  its  growth,  and  comes  from  the 
impression  made  by  outside  Nature,  and  a desire  to  con- 
quer it  and  carry  it  away.  It  is  a sort  of  answer  in  full, 
and  perhaps  the  most  complete  we  can  have,  notwith- 
standing its  great  limitations,  to  a question  asked  of  me 
by  a child — one  of  my  own  children,  now  grown  up, 
a scholar,  a thinker — concerning  his  other  brothers,  who 
were  all  natural  artists,  who  liked  to  copy,  who  liked 
to  draw,  who  liked  to  keep  continually  some  reference 
to  what  they  saw,  in  their  minds,  or  with  the  pencil  on 
paper.  He  said  to  me,  using  a form  of  question  very 
much  such  as  the  Greeks  made  years  ago : “ Why  do 
you  and  why  do  my  brothers  copy  these  things?  They 
already  exist  in  Nature.  Is  it  necessary  to  make  a copy 
which  must  necessarily  be  bad  ? ” This  was  the  view  of 
a boy  of  twelve  years  old,  and  is  naturally  the  absolute 
criticism  of  what  we  call  realism,  if  such  a thing  as 

129 


FIFTH  LECTURE 

realism  ever  existed.  But  it  is  impossible.  The  photo- 
graph even  has  its  fits.  The  photograph  even  is  not  quite 
steady  in  its  mind.  The  photograph  varies  a little.  The 
photograph  is  sentimental  at  times,  it  is  inaccurate  at 
least.  It  does  some  things  it  ought  not  to  do.  There  is 
no  realism  and  never  can  be  except  in  the  mind. 

Now  the  answer  to  my  little  boy’s  question  is  what 
Rousseau  did;  and  it  began  also  with  the  boy  Rousseau 
— this  love  of  out-of-doors.  At  the  early  age  of  twelve 
he  was  secretary  to  the  proprietor  of  a saw-mill  in  the 
forests  of  Franche  Comte.  His  employer  was  a relative. 
He  failed  in  business  and  the  boy  returned  home  to 
school;  but  having  shown  by  some  early  attempts  at 
painting  an  extraordinary  desire  and  capacity,  the 
family  allowed  a cousin,  a landscape  painter  of  whom  we 
know  a little,  to  begin  his  training,  under  a teacher  per- 
haps as  far  removed  as  could  well  be  from  what  was 
really  to  be  the  view  of  nature  expressed  by  Rousseau. 
He  was  taught  a certain  curious  formalism  which  existed 
in  the  early  part  of  the  nineteenth  century,  and  which 
probably  can  never  exist  again.  All  the  problems  that 
affect  the  modern  mind  were  skipped;  the  problems  of 
light,  of  what  we  called  6 values  ’ yesterday,  of  form, 
of  real  construction.  He  was  taught  what  is  called  draw- 
ing, that  is  to  say,  what  is  usually  and  foolishly  called 


130 


FIFTH  LECTURE 

drawing — the  following  of  an  edge  of  some  kind,  say  the 
edge  of  a form,  and  the  representation  of  anything  by 
some  agreeable  trick.  We  have  yet  the  same  fault,  but 
it  is  dignified  by  some  painters  through  the  extreme 
difficulty  of  so  doing  it,  the  representing  the  thing  by 
the  touch  of  the  brush.  The  touch  of  the  brush  is  so 
difficult  when  it  comes  to  be  a very  successful  thing,  that 
it  becomes  ennobled.  The  touch  of  the  little  lead  pencil 
which  the  boy  learned  was  nothing  but  a movement  to 
right  or  left,  without  any  implication  of  form.  I went 
through  that  myself  as  a small  boy,  at  no  great  distance 
from  the  date  of  this  man  Rousseau,  when  I was  taught 
to  draw  by  a teacher  of  the  eighteenth  century,  brought 
up  in  the  eighteenth  century,  who  had  the  eighteenth- 
century  habit,  and  if  he  had  studied  later  would  have 
begun  the  nineteenth  century.  Our  teaching  of  land- 
scape was  absolutely  perfunctory.  It  was  very  pretty; 
it  had  quite  a little  ideal  of  its  own,  there  was  something 
behind  it,  but  it  was  merely  a touch  which  represented 
this  or  that.  But  one  cannot  argue  about  these  things. 
The  touch  used  in  another  way,  as  it  is  in  Japan,  is  the 
result  of  long  study  by  a great  many  very  great  men, 
and  is  of  sufficient  difficulty  to  be  in  itself  a matter  of 
long  study,  and  in  itself  also  a matter  of  education. 

Rousseau’s  father  was  a clothier  in  moderate  circum- 
131 


FIFTH  LECTURE 


stances.  Rousseau  was  born  in  1812.  The  family  had  for 
a long  time  some  connection  with  art.  An  uncle  had  been 
a portrait  painter,  and  a portrait  painter  with  some 
faint  talent,  at  least  with  some  proof  of  character  and 
of  romantic  disposition.  His  mother’s  cousin  was  the 
artist  who  first  directed  the  boy’s  study.  Rousseau’s  ex- 
planation of  himself  is  that  his  first  teaching  was  so  bad 
that  its  spectre  pursued  him  for  years.  But,  however, 
while  a boy  and  up  to  his  seventeenth  year,  he  seems  to 
have  played  truant  most  of  the  time,  and  made  con- 
tinuous but  timid  attempts  to  express  what  he  was  be- 
ginning to  see.  That  is  to  say  like  the  usual  boy  that 
you  know.  The  boy  of  eighteen  broke  away  from  the 
wishes  of  his  teacher,  anxious  to  have  him  prepare  for 
the  career  of  a reputable  official  artist  by  competing 
for  the  Roman  prize.  In  the  mountains  of  Auvergne  he 
began  certain  studies  which  to  his  official  friends  were 
monstrous,  but  which  brought  him  the  good-will  of  some 
of  the  more  important  men  of  the  new  movement,  and 
among  others  the  influential  artist,  Ary  Scheffer.  The 
young  man  then  became  one  of  the  new  movement  with 
which  he  had  really  little  connection,  apart  from  that 
sentiment  of  natural  opposition  to  the  government,  the 
Government  Institute,  hatred  of  the  Academy  and  its 
narrowness,  and  a willingness  to  believe  that  all  the 

132 


FIFTH  LECTURE 


new  ideas  were  really  his.  Really  they  were  not,  yet  the 
youth’s  entanglement  with  men  of  revolutionary  and 
socialistic  leanings  stood  later  in  his  way,  and  served 
as  an  excuse  for  a continuous  opposition  on  the  part 
of  representatives  of  government  teaching,  which  lasted 
almost  to  the  end  of  his  meritorious  and  independent 
career.  This  was  largely  based  on  untruthful  allega- 
tions. It  embittered  many  moments  of  Rousseau’s  later 
life,  and  made  him  even  suspicious  at  times  of  friends 
who  were  in  realty  his  faithful  helpers  and  champions. 
I only  know  by  hearsay  and  by  a few  hints  of  these  facts 
of  his  connection  with  the  more  advanced  ideas  of  that 
time,  but  he  withdrew  from  them  so  completely  that,  as 
it  were,  the  traces  had  been  obliterated.  Some  of  his 
champions — and  of  course  they  encouraged  his  enemies 
— some  of  his  champions  attempted  to  connect  him,  as 
they  did  others,  with  socialistic  ideas,  with  communistic 
ideas  more  properly,  in  one  of  the  movements  which  go 
on  forever  of  making  art  a mere  expression  of  certain 
tendencies  at  certain  moments.  Rousseau  and  his  friends 
were  to  be  representatives  of  the  new  way  of  thinking, 
of  a new  social  form  of  government,  a new  social  form 
of  life,  of  which  I only  knew  in  the  way  that  we  all  know, 
and  with  which  we  sympathised  more  or  less.  But  on 
the  contrary,  now  that  the  storm  is  over,  now  that  the 


133 


FIFTH  LECTURE 

literary  men’s  work  is  only  a curiosity,  we  know  that 
these  painters  of  ours  represent  a form — the  steadiest 
form — of  conservatism  in  what  they  did.  The  young 
man  was  already,  in  1833,  a prominent  person,  fought 
over  by  writers  on  art,  who  delighted  in  introducing 
their  social  and  political  questions  into  the  peaceful 
domain  of  aesthetics.  Anything  will  do  for  a stone ; any- 
thing will  do  for  a thing  to  sling  with.  Rousseau’s  first 
celebrated  picture,  “ La  Descente  des  Vaches,”  is  a pic- 
ture which  to-day  is  almost  gone,  owing  to  many  imper- 
fections of  execution.  You  remember  what  I said  about 
the  execution  of  the  men  of  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth 
century  being  really  bad,  because  it  passed  over  the 
fundamental  reasons  that  make  oil  painting,  and  was 
detached  from  the  experience  of  the  eighteenth,  seven- 
teenth, sixteenth,  fifteenth,  and  fourteenth  centuries. 
This  picture  made  a great  sensation.  It  was  refused  at 
the  Exposition  of  1836.  It  was  defended  and  admired 
by  critics  and  artists,  established  the  reputation  of  the 
painter  to  all  of  the  greater  men  of  the  day,  and 
brought  him  the  friendship  and  good-will  of  such  men 
as  Ary  Scheffer,  Delacroix,  Decamps,  Barye,  and  Dupre, 
but  increased  still  more  the  opposition  of  the  men  of 
the  Institute.  Probably  the  Institute  saw  further  than 
these  other  men  did — saw  the  danger  of  bringing  back 

134 


FIFTH  LECTURE 

the  real  past,  that  is,  the  past  of  ages  from  which  one 
can  get  greater,  wider  and  more  liberal  inspiration  than 
from  the  narrower  past  just  behind  us.  They  saw  behind 
some  of  these  new  artists  the  Dutch  school  and  the 
poetry  of  Rembrandt.  They  saw  the  early  Italians,  they 
saw  the  evidences  of  tone,  the  value  of  what  would  be 
impressionism  later,  of  everything  that  they  hated  most. 
They  saw  the  formulas  of  Nature  and  not  the  formulae 
of  composition.  Our  young  men  were  revolutionists  from 
being  ultra-conservatives.  They  knew  nothing  of  what 
they  were  doing  in  that  way.  They  merely  made  the 
natural  opposition  that  any  one  does  by  going  on  in  his 
own  way.  All  the  more,  therefore,  did  they  suffer;  all 
the  more  did  they  not  understand.  The  painters  Dupre 
and  Rousseau  began  to  work  together,  visiting  together 
different  parts  of  France,  establishing  a community  of 
feeling  and  interest  which  was  only  once  broken  into  by 
a jealous  suspicion  of  Rousseau’s.  But  there  seemed  to 
be  always  more  clear  and  special  opposition  to  him,  be- 
yond all  the  others  who  were  in  the  movement  not  fa- 
voured by  the  Institute.  Time  and  again  his  pictures, 
famous  in  history  of  art,  were  refused  at  the  exhibitions, 
or,  if  accepted,  then  they  were  badly  hung,  and  such 
honours  as  were  granted  to  others  were  refused  to  him. 
Money  matters  naturally  were  also  difficult,  until  a later 

135 


FIFTH  LECTURE 


moment,  1851,  when  the  tide  had  begun  to  turn  and 
Rousseau  was  able  to  earn  a living  and  enjoy  for  some 
time  a commercial  success.  He  was  then  able  to  help  his 
friends,  purchasing  under  another  name,  for  instance, 
Millet’s  salon  picture  of  1855.  His  commercial  success 
later  was  even  mingled  with  the  curious  handling  of  his 
pictures  as  of  merely  commercial  value,  in  the  same  way 
that  we  see  in  stocks.  One  of  the  great  firms  bought 
Rousseaus  to  sell  low  and  put  them  in  the  market  below 
the  price  at  which  they  had  obtained  them  so  as  to 
make  an  opposition  to  the  other  dealers  who  handled, 
naturally,  the  Rousseaus  for  a rise.  Opposition  to  Rous- 
seau took  even  the  form  of  his  pictures  as  I say,  being 
bought  at  higher  prices.  These  fluctuations  in  his  means 
involved  Rousseau  in  financial  difficulties  for  which  his 
temperament  was  of  course  not  fitted.  His  was  the  tem- 
perament of  a dreamer,  not  at  all  the  man  described  by 
some  of  his  political  friends  as  a reformer,  as  a person 
engaged  in  general  ideas ; no,  he  was  purely  and  ab- 
solutely a painter,  a dreamer,  a man  in  love  with  certain 
things  he  had  seen.  And  his  living  in  solitude,  and  in  a 
state  of  opposition  and  intellectual  struggle  brought  on 
an  irregularity  of  habit  of  work,  which  is  singular,  per- 
haps, in  the  career  of  one  of  the  most  strenuous  and 
sincere  of  artists  at  any  time.  He  occasionally  painted 

136 


NOW  IN  THE  COLLECTION  OF  GEORG] 


NOW  IN  THE  COLLECTION  OP 


ROUSSEAU:  “ LE  PUY  ” 


nvassnou 


ROUSSEAU 


NOW  IN  THE  WILLIAM 


“ON  THE  ROAD” 


h e 
x 5 

>5  2 


INSTITUTE 


DAUBIGNY:  “MOONLIGHT 


DAUBIGNY:  “DIEPPE 


NOW  IN  THE  COLLECTION  OF  WILLIAM 


FIFTH  LECTURE 

pictures  which  were  nothing  but  the  result  of  much 
knowledge,  and  were  understood  receipts,  not  differing 
from  ever  so  many  of  the  fairly  great  men,  and  then 
again,  putting  aside  all  questions  of  interests,  of  his 
money  interests,  he  attacked  new  problems  of  extreme 
difficulty,  spending  months,  extending  into  years,  for 
elaboration,  rehandling,  and  changing  the  problems. 

He  is  known  to  have  absolutely  painted  in  a new  way 
works  which  were  already  among  the  most  remarkable 
studies  of  Nature  that  modern  art  has  given.  One  case 
that  I recall  was  caused  by  his  sudden  introduction  to 
the  question  brought  up  by  the  ordinary  little  Japanese 
prints  that  you  know,  the  extreme  luminosity  obtained 
by  a few  flat,  clear  colours,  and  by  their  relation  one 
to  another,  so  that  the  mere  quality  of  the  tone  and  its 
belonging  to  one  or  other  of  what  we  call  divisions  of 
what  we  call  colour,  that  is  to  say,  that  a red,  placed 
in  a sky  of  a certain  value,  not  too  deep,  is  forced  at 
once  into  the  background  and  into  being  a sky  by  a cer- 
tain blue  which  comes  against  it.  There  is  nothing  con- 
cealed or  involved — anybody  can  see  it  as  it  were — there 
is  no  trick  in  it.  It  is  a scientific  statement.  There  it  is. 
Somehow  or  other  you  see  that  the  pink  sky  involves  the 
opposition  of  blue  as  a perpendicular  against  it,  and  the 
thing  is  solved  with  no  modelling,  or  modelling  so  slight 

137 


FIFTH  LECTURE 

that  it  is  not  worth  speaking  of,  and  there  it  is.  And  a 
man  like  Rousseau  has  spent  months,  years,  of  hard 
work,  of  modelling,  of  darkening,  of  lightening,  of 
every  trick  that  he  knows  of  to  produce  something  as 
good,  or  not  quite  so  good  as  this  thing,  realised  in 
Japan  by  a naked  man  seated  on  a mat  and  daubing  a 
little  wet  water  colour  on  a block.  There  is  enough 
herein  to  make  a man  of  the  temperament  of  Rousseau 
(an  investigator,  an  analyst)  pause  and  become  fright- 
ened. Would  it  be  possible  to  paint  with  that  simplicity 
in  his  material,  oil?  Would  it  be  possible  to  use  these 
evident  secrets?  Would  it  be  possible  to  bring  them  into 
what  he  was  doing?  It  was  not.  The  question  was  too 
large  in  reality  and  he  merely  spoiled  for  a time  some  of 
the  things  he  was  at  work  on.  The  later  painters,  as 
you  know,  immediately  afterward  began  to  take  up 
questions  of  a similar  kind,  and  since  then  up  to  the 
present  movement  we  have  had  the  struggle  to  repre- 
sent light  by  colours,  by  an  arrangement  of  colours, 
an  opposition  of  colour,  a concatenation  of  colour. 

Rousseau  had  undertaken,  as  it  were,  a personal 
struggle  with  Nature,  a wish  to  transfer  absolutely  into 
the  space  of  a frame  all  the  characteristics  of  Nature 
which  he  saw  before  him : the  solidity  of  the  ground,  the 
growth  of  plants  and  trees,  the  complications  of  foliage, 

138 


FIFTH  LECTURE 

the  infinite  tapestries  of  weeds  and  grass,  the  hardness 
of  rock,  the  softness  of  marsh,  the  flow  of  water,  its 
transparency,  its  reflection,  the  play  of  the  clouds  over 
the  scene,  their  make,  their  lights  and  shadows,  and  the 
sunlight  or  cloudiness  that  drops  through  all  this  vege- 
tation, lighting  here  and  there,  logically  this  more  than 
that,  and  yet  also  to  have  the  view,  not  a piece  cut  out 
from  the  panorama,  but  a little  world  complete  in  itself, 
with  the  optical  modulations  which  our  eyes  make  and 
which  constitute  a picture  and  not  a mere  study.  That 
is  to  say  that  Rousseau’s  struggle  was  a dual  one.  It 
was  to  take  up  the  work  of  the  great  masters  of  the 
past  who  painted  pictures,  that  is  to  say,  little  worlds, 
and  to  introduce  into  these  new  creations  all  that  he 
could  gather  together  of  the  infinite  facts  which  make 
the  world  we  see.  Hence  perhaps,  there  is  too  much  in 
many  of  his  pictures,  but  it  is  not  the  too  much  of  a 
mere  record,  of  a mere  catalogue,  of  an  addition  of 
facts  put  in  because  they  were  there ; it  is  that  less  than 
what  he  put  in  would  be  sufficient,  and  that  in  a struggle 
with  all  the  difficulties  of  representing  Nature,  the  man 
must  be,  to  a certain  extent,  defeated.  But  the  cause  of 
this  deficiency  or  failure  in  Rousseau’s  work  is  not  to 
his  discredit.  It  is  a form  of  overconscientiousness.  If 
we  had  his  portrait  here  I think  you  would  see  it  in  his 

139 


FIFTH  LECTURE 


face,  and  this  very  defect  gives  to  his  work  a relative 
solemnity  when  compared  with  that  of  his  great  friend 
Dupre,  whom  he  touches  so  closely,  and  Decamps,  who 
is  more  nearly  a recorder  of  Nature,  as  already  seen, 
a student  unwilling  to  thrust  into  the  pictures  before 
him  problems  that  have  belonged  to  other  sights  al- 
ready matured,  or  yet  to  be  studied.  The  question  of 
possible  problems  came  to  Rousseau’s  mind  as  he  went 
along.  He  repainted  a completed  work  to  place  before 
himself  a new  difficulty  unthought  of  before  when  he 
was  beginning  the  painting.  He  laboured  for  years  over 
a picture  in  the  anxiety  of  making  it  one  final  expression 
of  the  subject.  It  seems — I am  thinking  back — it  seems 
to  me  as  much  as  eight  years  in  one  case  I remember. 
He  explained  to  a remonstrating  friend  that  what  he 
would  have  wished  would  have  been  to  devote  himself  to 
the  creation  of  one  sole  and  unique  picture,  to  devote 
himself  to  it,  to  take  all  his  delight  in  it,  to  suffer  for 
it,  to  enjoy  it,  until,  content  with  his  work  after 
years  of  trial,  he  should  be  able  to  sign  it  and  say: 
“ There  my  powers  end,  and  there  my  heart  stops  beat- 
ing.” The  rest  of  his  life  he  said  would  be  passed  in 
making,  drawing,  or  sketching  pictures  for  amusement, 
which  he  would  throw,  like  flowers,  at  the  foot  of  the 
work  with  which  he  would  be  satisfied.  There  were  times 

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FIFTH  LECTURE 

therefore  when  Rousseau  could  sell  nothing,  and  was 
again  in  the  straits  of  poverty  and  anxiety.  Creditors 
pressed  him,  and  the  perpetual  uncertainty  of  his  wife’s 
mental  health,  threatening  a separation  to  which  he 
would  not  consent,  while  he  insisted  that  he  could  not 
take  his  own  respite  at  the  expense  of  her  feelings. 

Meanwhile  he  continued  his  career,  which  became 
more  and  more  successful,  but  which  was  to  end  fatally 
in  the  middle  of  triumph,  and  owing  again  to  the  op- 
position of  the  government  artists.  In  1867  he  had 
realised  a great  position,  was  selling  his  pictures  for  a 
great  deal  of  money,  had  received  the  gold  medal,  was 
elected  president  of  the  jury  of  the  great  International 
Exhibition  of  1867,  where,  however,  he  of  all  the  jurors 
and  all  the  exhibitors  representing  the  mass  of  the 
world,  was  excluded  from  the  foreordained  compliment, 
a promotion  in  the  Legion  of  Honour.  He  felt  the  blow 
more  than  it  deserved.  As  I said  before  he  had  become 
suspicious  of  many  of  his  friends ; he  had  also  believed 
that  fame  would  free  him  from  the  persistent  malice 
of  the  government  school.  He  fell  ill  with  something 
like  a form  of  paralysis  and  died  the  same  year,  Decem- 
ber, 1867. 

It  is  difficult  to  disentangle  Dupre  from  Rousseau, 
and  in  this  case  the  name  of  the  Barbizon  school  is 

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FIFTH  LECTURE 


justified — that  is  to  say,  a union  of  methods  of  work 
as  well  as  of  intention.  How  much  one  got  from  the 
other,  what  would  have  happened  if  they  had  not  met 
and  formed  a manner  of  partnership  with  each  other 
it  is  difficult  to  say  to-day. 

Perhaps  at  times  one  feels  the  work  of  Dupre  to  be 
less  of  a separate  creation  and  more  of  a study,  but  this 
is  only  at  times,  for  there  are  many  cases  in  which  he, 
Dupre,  is  very  decidedly  the  painter  of  a subject.  What- 
ever the  differences  may  be,  his  life  is  inseparable  from 
that  of  Rousseau.  He  was  born  in  1812,  therefore  he 
was  the  same  age  as  Rousseau.  He  was  the  son  of  a 
manufacturer  of  porcelain  near  Nantes.  He  learned 
something  of  his  father’s  and  brother’s  business,  and 
not  unnaturally  was  taught  something  about  painting 
from  the  one  point  of  view  of  the  workman,  which  we 
all  ought  to  consider  an  excellent  one.  He  came  to  Paris 
almost  a boy,  and  seems  to  have  had  his  future  de- 
termined by  his  acquaintance  with  Cabat,  who  was  of 
his  own  age  and  also  an  apprentice  decorator.  They  had 
seen  together  the  pictures  of  the  Louvre,  where  Cabat 
was  copying,  and  this  determined  Dupre’s  desire  to  be- 
come an  artist  beyond  the  stretch  of  his  usual  work  on 
mere  plates.  Some  help  he  got  outside,  but  certainly  the 
acquaintance  with  Cabat,  who  is  a real  precursor  also, 

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FIFTH  LECTURE 

is  sufficient  to  have  placed  the  foundations  of  serious 
study.  And  there  were  others.  There  was  a precursor 
of  pre-Raphaelism : Delaberge,  there  was  Huet,  who 
might  be  described  as  the  painter  of  a general  impres- 
sion, and  there  was  Diaz  coming,  and  I have  to  skip  a 
dozen  names  which  belong  to  the  friends  and  acquaint- 
ances of  these  young  men,  so  that  the  boy  of  nineteen 
appeared  with  sufficient  importance  in  the  great  Salon 
of  1837,  alongside  of  great  names.  In  a few  years  he 
was  in  England  and  must  have  been  affected  by  the 
English  school,  some  few  of  whose  works  made  a great 
impression  on  the  younger  French  artists.  Delacroix, 
as  you  know,  not  only  felt  this  influence,  but  had  de- 
liberately studied  the  methods  of  the  English  painters 
with  a view  to  connect  again  through  them  with  a past 
that  no  longer  existed  on  the  Continent.  This  English 
residence  brings  the  painter’s  life  to  1836,  and  then 
toward  1840  he  had  become  more  intimate  yet  with 
Rousseau.  They  painted  in  adjacent  studios  after  ex- 
cursions into  various  parts  of  France.  At  some  mo- 
ments in  their  acquaintance  Rousseau’s  more  suspicious 
mind  doubted,  as  we  know,  Dupre’s  services,  and  a cool- 
ness of  some  duration  ensued.  The  basis  of  this  mis- 
understanding was  the  difficulty  Rousseau  had  always 
found  in  the  reception  of  his  works  by  the  management 

143 


FIFTH  LECTURE 


of  the  government  Exposition  called  the  Salon,  and  the 
withholding  of  any  government  honours.  About  this 
time  Dupre  seems  to  have  retired  from  public  exposi- 
tions for  a term  of  years  ending  toward  1852,  but  his 
importance  was  duly  recognised  and  he  seems  almost 
alone  of  the  men  so  far  mentioned  to  have  lived  in  cir- 
cumstances allowing  him  to  pursue  his  art  freely  and 
to  help  the  men  he  cared  for,  notably  Rousseau.  The 
steadiness  of  his  career  leaves  little  to  say.  He  was  one 
of  the  last  survivors  of  the  men  classed  under  the  name 
of  the  Barbizon  painters,  living  until  1889  in  a repu- 
tation solidly  established  and  recognised. 

And  a career  of  still  greater  evenness  is  that  of 
Charles  Francis  Daubigny.  He  was  born  in  1817,  was 
the  son  of  a drawing-master  who  had  studied  under 
Bertin,  the  representative,  classical  formulist  landscape 
painter,  a manner  of  formal  painting  that  you  hardly 
know  unless,  perchance,  you  have  been  abroad.  It  is  dif- 
ficult to  define,  being  merely  an  abstract  between  a cheap 
form  of  composition  and  the  early  influences  of  the 
past — the  eighteenth  century  and  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury— the  great  paintings  of  Claude  and  others.  So  that 
vaguely  there  is  a little  reminiscence,  a slight  something, 
like  a schoolgirl’s  analysis  of  “Paradise  Lost.”  An  uncle 
and  aunt  were  successful  miniature  painters,  so  that  the 

144 


FIFTH  LECTURE 

boy  began  his  life,  as  he  ended  it,  under  the  influence  of 
the  studio.  When  a child  he  was  much  in  the  country  as 
a remedy  for  delicate  health,  and  became  acquainted 
with  the  land  he  painted  later.  As  a youngster  he  sup- 
ported himself,  learned  etching  and  engraving,  and  put 
aside  enough  money  to  allow  him  and  a friend  to  go  to 
Italy.  It  is  true  he  went  on  foot,  but  all  the  better  for 
what  they  saw  and  enjoyed.  He  returned  on  foot  also 
and,  like  himself,  still  having  money  in  his  pocket.  He 
helped  to  restore  the  pictures  in  the  Louvre  and  appar- 
ently lost  his  place  by  expressing  an  opinion  as  to  the 
propriety  of  some  of  the  repairs  he  was  asked  to  do. 
He  managed  to  visit  Holland  and  admire  the  old  paint- 
ers, and  on  his  return  made  many  friends  among  artists 
of  various  temperaments.  He  even  attempted  to  get  the 
Roman  prize,  and  seems  to  have  been  disqualified  by  a 
technical  rule,  namely,  not  having  attended  school  the 
day  before  the  examination.  This  absolutely  threw  him 
out.  One  may  wonder  what  would  otherwise  have  hap- 
pened with  so  easy  going  and  plastic  a nature,  which 
was  also  a sensitive  one.  His  missing  the  Roman  prize 
turned  him  to  the  study  of  outside  Nature  in  the  free 
way  we  have  now  learned  to  accept  as  being  the  only 
possible  way;  but  he  kept  to  his  engraving  as  a means 
of  support,  and  made  his  painting  his  ambition,  his 

145 


FIFTH  LECTURE 


pleasure,  his  glory.  The  simplicity  of  mind  with  which 
he  looked  at  things  has  made  his  pictures  stand  well 
alongside  of  the  more  powerful  men  with  whom  he  sym- 
pathised. For  they  are  more  like  studies,  that  is,  like  the 
representations  of  the  pleasure  he  took  in  certain  scenes. 
They  might  often  be  pictures  but  they  are  very  often 
slices  cut  out  of  Nature.  And  in  that  way  he  departs 
somewhat  from  his  friends  whose  names  live  with  us.  All 
those  that  we  have  named  are  builders  of  pictures,  and 
yet  one  bond  unites  them,  a great  love  of  Nature  and  a 
certain  reaching  out  of  the  hands  back  to  the  greater 
art  of  the  past.  As  Daubigny  etched  and  engraved  con- 
tinuously, one  sees  in  these  smaller  matters  the  use  for 
his  independence.  As  he  attempted  greater  ones  he 
entered  more  and  more  necessarily  into  the  idea  of  the 
deliberate  work  of  art ; but  the  charm  lies  greatly  in  his 
fluidity,  in  his  acceptance  of  very  many  different  inten- 
tions, so  that  he  is  hard  to  define  from  the  absence  of 
any  strain  of  intention  in  his  career.  As  we  have  seen, 
he  prospered,  was  able  to  provide  for  his  people,  and  at 
the  end  of  his  life  to  paint  just  as  he  liked.  General 
friendship  and  good-will  and  admiration  surrounded 
him.  He  died  in  1878,  leaving  Dupre  the  last  repre- 
sentative of  the  group. 

For  my  next  lecture  I propose  to  take  up  Corot,  who 

146 


FIFTH  LECTURE 

is  a very  large  figure,  not  only  by  what  he  has  done 
himself  but  by  all  that  he  implies.  Perhaps  I shall  re- 
sume somewhat  what  I have  already  said,  and  explain 
to  you  how  the  consideration  of  these  men  (who  are 
necessarily  a part  of  yourselves  as  far  as  you  do  any- 
thing in  the  way  of  painting),  how  far  knowing  them, 
looking  at  them  separately  and  analysing  them — may 
be  of  use  to  you.  I think  that  the  consideration  of 
greater  artists  as  representatives  of  problems,  puts 
aside,  or  may  help  to  put  aside,  from  the  younger  man 
the  idea  of  mere  imitation,  the  idea  of  using  them  in  a 
cheap  way,  as  a formula,  which,  if  their  souls  could 
penetrate  ours,  would  probably  be  the  last  insult  that 
they  could  obtain.  For  one  thing  above  all  else  they  did, 
and  that  was  to  protest  all  their  lives  against  a doctrine 
of  mere  form. 


147 


SIXTH  LECTURE 


Millet  separates  more  entirely  from  the  general  in- 
tentions of  the  artists  we  are  considering.  In  Corot 
we  have  also  a distinct  separation  in  that , during  the 
failures  or  successes  of  others , Corot  was  forming  a style 
for  himself  which  was  to  appear  newer , hut  which  was , 
in  reality , the  result  of  a desire  to  retain  the  teachings 
of  the  past , and  also  naturally  to  represent  external 
nature  in  some  moods  which  had  no  previous  interpreter. 
Corot9  leaving  trade , begim  painting  not  early  in  life. 
His  strong  body  and  good  nature  well  inherited  car- 
ried him  thankfully  through  life.  Recognition  of  his 
work  very  slow.  He  studies  in  Italy , and  in  reality 
never  separates  from  its  lessons  and  influence.  The 
human  form  he  is  always  in  sympathy  with , in  con- 
tradiction with  most  landscape  painters.  His  study 
that  way  influences  all  his  work ; and  as  we  shall  see  he 
becomes  an  extraordinary  figure  painter  outside  of  land- 
scape. But  in  his  landscapes  the  figures  are  at  ease  in 
a manner  only  approached  by  very  few , as  they  are  in 
Nature. 

Explanations  of  these  points;  again  a reference  to 
the  theatrical  as  opposed  to  the  natural;  and  also  to 
the  recognition  of  the  use  of  convention , not  to  be  con- 
fused with  the  representation  of  Nature.  The  use  of  the 
frame.  The  bad  technique  of  the  painting  of  the  last 
century.  A summary  of  the  values  of  the  artists  consid- 
ered here.  Dupre’s  large  definition  of  their  attitude. 
The  encouragement  to  be  derived  from  their  works 
and  lives . 


SIXTH  LECTURE 


IN  this  last  lecture  I shall  talk  to  you  about  Corot 
and  probably  say  a few  things  of  his  relation  to 
the  other  men  whom  we  have  chosen  to  connect  with 
him  under  the  name,  the  unfortunate  name,  of  the 
Barbizon  school.  You  know  that  Millet  separates  more 
entirely  than  any  of  them  from  the  general  inten- 
tions of  the  school,  and  in  Corot  we  also  have  a very 
distinct  separation.  During  the  failures  and  successes 
of  the  other  men  of  whom  I have  spoken,  the  land- 
scape painter  Corot  was  slowly  forming  a style  for 
himself  which  was  to  appear  much  newer  than  the  man- 
ners of  these  coeval  artists  and  yet  was  the  result  of  a 
similar  desire  to  retain  the  teachings  of  the  past  in  some 
especial  ways,  of  which  the  artist  was  fond,  and  which 
happened  to  have  had  no  previous  interpreter.  As  he  be- 
gan late,  somewhat  obscurely  and  certainly  modestly, 
Corot  appears  a younger  artist  than  he  was.  In  reality 
he  was  born  in  1796,  in  what  is  known  as  the  year  8, 
the  eighth  year  of  the  foundation  of  the  fi<  one  and  in- 

151 


SIXTH  LECTURE 


divisible  Republic”  of  France.  Corot  came  of  a good 
peasant  stock  of  Burgundy,  of  which  origin  he  was 
proud  and  from  which  he  inherited,  perhaps,  the  strong 
body  and  sturdy  good  nature  which  carried  him  thank- 
fully through  life,  but  this  was  not  direct  or  near ; for 
I am  talking  of  the  father  of  his  grandfather.  Corot’s 
mother  was  a successful  milliner,  owning  her  house  on 
a quay  of  the  Seine,  and  his  father  was  a thrifty  trades- 
man. After  the  usual  school  days  passed  away  from 
Paris  in  that  charming  city  of  Rouen,  far  down  the 
great  river  Seine,  the  boy  was  employed  in  a draper’s 
shop  from  1812  to  1820,  a disagreeable  discipline,  to 
which  he  attributed,  however,  his  habits  of  order  and 
regularity,  so  regular  that  he  timed  within  three  min- 
utes each  morning  his  appearance  at  his  studio.  When  a 
boy  he  had  made  the  acquaintance  of  a landscape  painter 
of  whom  we  know  little,  who  is  not  worth  insisting  upon, 
and  he  had  obtained  some  drawing  lessons.  He  has  re- 
corded that  in  his  earliest  childhood  he  had  fallen  in  love 
with  Nature,  with  out-of-doors  and  with  certain  moods 
of  Nature  which  he  used  to  see  in  his  hurried  walks  at 
dusk,  by  the  big  trees  or  by  the  side  of  the  river,  ac- 
companied by  his  guardian,  who  himself  was  fond  of 
solitude  and  took  him  to  out-of-the-way  places  in  walks. 
When  the  time  came  that  the  boy  desired  more  than 

152 


SIXTH  LECTURE 

anything  else  in  the  world  to  become  a painter,  his 
father  was  able  to  give  him  a small  annuity,  and 
later  his  income  was  sufficient  for  his  always  modest 
needs.  We  have  any  number  of  anecdotes  about  Corot; 
there  is  one  which  explains  the  artistic  mind,  which  was 
quoted  to  me  first  by  a business  friend  with  whom  I 
was  discussing  the  curious  impracticability  of  the  ar- 
tistic temperament.  Corot  had  reported  to  his  employer 
that  he  had  successfully  sold  a quantity  of  beautiful 
Lyons  silk.  He  expected  some  acknowledgment,  on  the 
contrary  the  draper  explained  to  him  that  there  was 
no  merit  whatever  in  disposing  of  really  excellent  goods, 
the  only  real  merit  was  to  sell  what  was  bad.  Whereupon 
Corot  perceived  that  this  is  exactly  what  an  artist  can- 
not do;  and  he  decided  to  quit  commerce.  He  obtained 
his  father’s  consent  for  his  career  as  a painter  on  what 
was  to  him  a large  annuity  of  three  hundred  dollars.  He 
was  over  thirty  when  he  first  began  to  paint  on  the 
very  day  that  his  father  freed  him,  going  straight  out- 
of-doors  and  painting  near  the  shop.  He  used  to  show 
that  first  picture  of  his  to  his  friends,  saying : “ It  is 
as  young  as  ever;  it  marks  the  hour  and  the  time  of 
day  when  I did  it.  But  Mademoiselle  Rose,  who  worked 
at  my  mother’s,  and  who  looked  at  me  while  at  my  work, 
and  I — how  do  we  stand  it,  and  where  are  we  P ” 


153 


SIXTH  LECTURE 

He  studied  faithfully  under  the  direction  of  his  mas- 
ters, who  represented  the  school  of  the  artificial,  mis- 
named “ classical ” formula,  in  all  its  rigour.  In  1825 
he  went  to  Rome  to  carry  out  still  further  this  mode  of 
study,  but  curiously  enough  began  there  to  study  for 
himself  in  exactly  the  opposite  manner  to  the  way  incul- 
cated, without  probably  feeling  in  the  recesses  of  his 
mind  that  he  was  contradicting  what  he  had  been  told. 
He  made  rapid  notes  of  everything  that  moved,  that  was 
transitory  and  different  from  the  posing  of  the  studio. 
In  that  way  he  learned  the  difference  between  Nature  on 
the  wing,  as  it  were,  and  that  artificial  combination  of 
parts  successfully  adjusted,  which  is  the  usual  founda- 
tion of  the  picture  or  the  statue  made  in  the  studio.  I 
cannot  too  much  insist  upon  that.  In  every  one  of  these 
talks  I have  in  some  form  or  other  referred  to  it,  and 
with  these  men  of  our  talks  the  idea  was  so  grounded  and 
so  natural  that  they  were  not  aware  of  the  exceeding 
difference  they  were  making  at  the  beginning  of  their 
career.  I said  “ the  usual  foundation  of  the  picture  or 
the  statue  made  in  the  studio.”  In  talking  with  M.  Rodin, 
the  sculptor,  when  I first  made  his  acquaintance  some 
ten  or  twelve  years  ago,  we  agreed  over  this  fact  which 
had  made  me  admire  his  work,  though  I had  seen  it  only 
a few  days  before  for  the  first  time.  The  figures  which 

154 


SIXTH  LECTURE 

he  built  were  no  abstract;  even  if  they  were  alone.  In 
groups  they  were  related  to  each  other  all  the  way 
through.  If  the  subject  were  but  a single  figure,  that 
figure  did  not  move  in  space  but  moved  as  if  other  human 
figures  might  possibly  interfere  or  be  present.  Every 
being,  as  you  see  it  go  along  (you  yourself  included), 
has  a motion  related  to  other  beings  or  to  the  place  it  is 
in.  This  is  not  so  of  course  on  the  stage,  where  the 
place  is  arranged  for  the  stage  walk  and  the  stage 
gesture,  or  on  the’ studio  model  stand  with  nothing  to 
get  in  its  way.  Every  part  of  two  people  walking  to- 
gether, or  two  animals  rising,  pulling  or  moving  to- 
gether, is  influenced  by  their  being  in  common,  apart 
from  the  chance  of  meeting  others,  which  is  another 
complication.  As  an  example  you  have  but  to  look  at 
photographs  of  people  walking  in  the  street. 

Now  that  is  at  the  bottom  of  the  reasons  why  these 
men  are  a lesson.  Not  more  than  the  great  men  of  the 
past,  perhaps  not  as  much,  but  they  are  nearest  to  us, 
and  thereby  a little  more  visible,  and  we  know  more  of 
their  traits,  and  we  know  more  of  their  methods,  and 
we  ourselves  are  to  a certain  extent  part  of  them.  You 
will  remember  how  I insisted,  but  not  enough,  upon  the 
point  in  Delacroix’s  “ Women  of  Algiers  ” that  these 
people  moved  or  sat  in  reference  to  each  other,  in  ref- 

155 


SIXTH  LECTURE 


erence  to  the  place  they  were  in.  They  can  get  up  and 
change  places  and  one  almost  feels  that  certainly  they 
will  do  so.  That  is  not  what  one  sees  in  the  very  excellent 
and  handsome  pictures  of  French  artists  of  the  Institute 
when  they  paint  original  scenes.  There  the  theatrical 
always  prevails,  and  one  cannot  believe  for  a moment 
that  each  person  is  free  to  get  up  and  spoil  his  “ part.” 
Of  course  all  is  fair  in  art,  but  we  had  better  also  see 
clearly  what  we  are  looking  at,  and  not  accept  for  real- 
ism what  is  really  make-believe. 

At  the  time  that  Corot  turned  his  attention  to  such 
variations  of  Nature  and  stocked  his  unconscious  mem- 
ory with  these  movements  of  line,  he  retained  that  part 
of  his  training  which  obliged  him  to  exercise  firmness 
and  precision,  and  his  studies  in  that  direction  are  still 
models  of  very  complete  observation.  The  first  one  that 
we  saw  on  the  screen  reminds  us  of  that,  but  of  course 
you  will  have  seen  a certain  number  of  those  studies  of 
Italy  in  which  accuracy  is  evidently  a great  part  of 
his  intention.  The  work  that  he  was  doing  was  already 
a little  beyond  the  average  of  school  formulae,  though  a 
few  of  the  better  artists  of  the  classical  school  en- 
couraged him,  for  which  the  kindly  man  was  forever 
grateful. 

In  1827  Corot  began  exhibiting  regularly  in  the 
156 


SIXTH  LECTURE 

official  exhibition  which  we  call  the  Salon.  He  continued 
to  the  day  of  his  death  in  1875.  If  he  was  discouraged 
by  being  misunderstood,  he  was  patient  and  he  made  no 
protest.  The  critics  of  the  day  passed  over  his  work. 
He  sold  nothing,  and  the  admiration  of  a few  artists 
rather  impressed  upon  the  public  that  there  was  some- 
thing mysterious  and  overaesthetic  in  his  work.  That  we 
know  ourselves  from  our  own  sad  experience.  It  is  only 
just  now  that  Mr.  Whistler,  for  example,  the  myster- 
ious, seems  more  common  property  and  not  an  extraor- 
dinary example  of  curiosity.  The  representatives,  too, 
of  official  art  were  slow  to  understand  that  this  man 
did  not  believe  himself  to  be  at  all  revolutionary,  but 
was  in  fact  a worshipper  of  all  that  they  preached,  but 
which,  alas!  he  and  they  practised  differently.  With 
fifteen  or  twenty  years  of  waiting  some  more  open 
recognition  came  at  length.  Corot  went  again  to  Italy 
and  carried  out  still  further  the  direction  of  his  studies. 
Then  he  began  to  be  recognised,  but  was  still  considered 
strange.  In  1847  he  was  made  a Knight  of  the  Legion 
of  Honour,  a form  of  acknowledgment  which  made  his 
father  increase  the  allowance  of  this  man  now  past 
middle  age. 

More  and  more  years  passed  on,  and  toward  the 
end  of  the  fifties  Corot,  while  not  triumphant, 

157 


was 


SIXTH  LECTURE 


known  and  even  admired  beyond  the  circle  of  his  great 
admirers,  the  other  men  of  whom  I am  talking.  The  new 
poetic  feeling  in  his  treatment  of  well-worn  subjects  be- 
gan to  be  recognised,  and  the  accuracy  of  impression 
of  those  of  his  paintings  which  seem  mere  records  of 
Nature,  was  understood  better  and  better  by  the  many 
artists  who  had  started  out  to  conquer  the  different 
phases  of  out-of-door  appearances.  Further  than  any  of 
them  he  carried  the  translation  of  special  light  and 
colour  into  what  we  call  values,  that  is  to  say,  the  rela- 
tion of  light  and  dark  of  any  place  in  the  entire  scope 
of  the  picture. 

He  was  no  longer  an  eccentric ; he  was  a master,  evi- 
dently capable  of  handling  easily  some  of  the  most 
formidable  problems  that  the  painter  meets.  But  it  re- 
quired still  another  decade  to  affirm  this  for  every  one, 
and  perhaps  even  the  next  quarter  of  a century  was 
necessary  to  place  him,  just  before  his  death,  in  his 
secure  position.  Meanwhile  he  was  looked  at  with  friend- 
ly feeling  and  even  with  affection  by  all  who  knew  him. 
His  kindness  to  all  who  needed  it,  his  sincere  admiration 
for  those  who  deserved  it,  the  simplicity  and  serenity  of 
his  mind  gave  him  a position  free  from  all  envy,  and 
allowed  those  who  stood  in  his  way  to  forgive  him  more 
easily  the  harm  they  had  done  him.  He  was  charitable 

158 


SIXTH  LECTURE 

and  when  he  began  to  make  money  he  at  once  helped 
others  with  it.  As  he  said : “ It  all  comes  back  again 
somehow.” 

In  1870,  when  he  saw  that  the  siege  of  Paris  was  in- 
evitable, he  returned  to  Paris  to  help  in  the  ambulances 
and  among  the  poor,  spending  what  was  a large  sum 
for  him,  and  yet  managing  even  then  to  go  on  with  his 
work  as  a consolation  in  those  dark  days.  And  he  was 
happy  in  it  (as  his  paintings  show).  He  said  to  another 
painter  a few  hours  before  his  death : “ Truly,  if  my 
hour  has  come  I shall  have  nothing  to  complain  of.  For 
fifty- three  years  I have  been  a painter.  I have  there- 
fore been  permitted  to  devote  myself  entirely  to  what  I 
love  most  in  the  world.  I have  never  suffered  from  pov- 
erty. I have  had  good  parents  and  excellent  friends.  I 
can  only  be  thankful  to  God.”  This  was  in  the  begin- 
ning of  1875.  Corot  therefore  lived  during  the  entire 
movement  of  the  nineteenth  century. 

Only  two  of  the  men  who  belonged  to  his  group  out- 
lived him — Dupre,  who  died  in  1882,  Daubigny  dying 
in  1878.  He  belonged  to  them  in  so  far  that  he  was 
especially  fond  of  Nature  in  all  its  aspects,  though  he 
more  especially  loved  certain  features  of  landscape 
which  he  saw  more  frequently  and  also  certain  kinds  of 
days  which  seemed  to  him  especially  lovely.  A letter  of 

159 


SIXTH  LECTURE 


his,  describing  the  delightful  day  of  a landscape  painter, 
tells  just  what  he  liked  most.  “ He  has  watched  for  the 
dawn  ” ; “ Nature  is  behind  a white  veil,  on  which  some 
masses  of  form  are  vaguely  indicated.  Everything  smells 
sweet,  everything  trembles  under  the  invigorating 
breezes  of  the  dawn.  The  sun  begins  to  rend  the  veil  of 
gauze.  The  vapours  of  night  still  hang  like  silver  tufts 
of  cool  green  grass.  The  leaves  feel  cold  and  move  to 
and  fro  in  the  morning  air.  Under  the  leaves  the  unseen 
birds  are  singing.  It  sounds  as  if  the  flowers  were  saying 
their  morning  prayers.  We  can  see  nothing,  but  the 
landscape  is  all  there,  all  perfect  behind  the  transparent 
gauze.  The  mist  rises  and  rises  and  pales  in  the  sun. 
And  rising  it  discloses  the  river’s  silver  scales,  the 
meads,  the  trees,  the  cottages,  the  vanishing  distance. 
We  can  distinguish  now  all  that  we  divined  before.  The 
sun  has  risen,  all  things  breaking  forth  into  glistening 
and  glittering  and  shining  and  a full  flood  of  light, 
of  pale,  caressing  light — as  yet.  The  sun  grows  hot — 
we  can  see  too  much  now.  Let  us  go  home.” 

The  wet  morning  and  the  dewy  eve,  then,  were  what 
he  painted  most — and  on  that  side  of  representing  mo- 
ments in  Nature,  he  was  closely  affiliated  to  those  of  his 
day  who  were  moving  more  and  more  toward  realism. 
For  all  else  he  held  on  to  the  sequence  of  the  greater 

160 


SIXTH  LECTURE 

masters  of  the  classical  past.  It  needs  not  for  us  to 
follow  his  choice  of  stories,  his  pleasant  poetical  legends 
in  landscape,  derived  from  what  he  saw  about  him,  or 
remembered  of  Italy.  The  essence  of  those  paintings, 
even  when  most  veiled  by  the  movements  of  light  and 
shade,  is  the  arrangement  of  light  and  the  proportion 
of  space.  It  is  that  which  gives  the  strange  recall  of 
something  which  we  have  dreamed  of,  which  we  knew  be- 
fore. It  is  the  recall  of  all  the  solemn  dispositions  of 
light  and  space  which  have  come  down  to  us  from  all 
time.  In  such  landscapes  he  has  placed  figures  under 
influences  equally  divided.  They  are  placed  as  if  they 
had  been  really  seen ; they  have  the  look  of  realism  very 
often,  and  they  are  so  seen  in  that  they  are  intimately 
associated  with  the  space  that  holds  them,  with  an  ac- 
curacy far  beyond  that  of  the  majority  of  the  most 
accurate  representations.  They  are  so  placed  that  they 
could  move;  they  do  not  look  as  if  the  painter  had 
chosen  their  position,  but  look  as  if  he  had  only  re- 
corded what  he  saw,  and  at  the  same  time  in  reality  they 
are  a part  of  the  mechanism  of  the  make-up  of  the  pic- 
ture which  could  not  do  without  them. 

In  this  matter,  as  in  almost  others  of  Corot’s  ex- 
cellences, we  have  been  slow  to  discover  the  wonderful 
art  concealed  under  the  appearance  of  that  simplicity — 

161 


SIXTH  LECTURE 


what  the  French  call  “ naivete  ” — which  belonged  to 
Corot’s  expression,  as  it  was  a part  of  his  nature ; which 
prevented  his  being  taken  as  seriously  as  he  might  have 
been  under  more  pompous  formulas,  which  allowed  many 
to  patronise  him  under  the  name  of  “ Good  Corot,”  and 
of  “ Father  Corot,”  but  which  far  down  at  the  bottom 
was  what  might  have  been  expected  of  that  rich  ancient 
Burgundian  sap,  which  through  peasant  ancestry  de- 
veloped intense  shrewdness  under  the  forms  of  ironical 
indifference. 

In  the  same  way  that  the  subtleness  and  complete- 
ness of  his  landscapes  were  not  understood  on  account 
of  their  very  existing,  the  extraordinary  attainment  of 
Corot  in  the  painting  of  figures  is  scarcely  under- 
stood to-day  even  by  many  of  his  admirers  and  most 
students.  And  yet  the  people  he  represents,  and  which 
he  represents  with  the  innocence  of  a Greek,  have  a 
quality  which  has  skipped  generations  of  painters  and 
is  not  unlike  what  possibly  a Greek  sculptor  might  have 
tried  to  do  if  he  had  had  no  prejudiced  habit  of  using 
the  brush  in  too  artificial  a way. 

How,  when,  and  where  Corot  passed  into  the  mastery 
of  the  figure  I do  not  know — far  back  we  know  he  noted 
and  studied  movement  and  pose  and  we  have  commented 
upon  the  singular,  exceptional  faculty  he  always  showed 

162 


SIXTH  LECTURE 


for  placing  figures  in  his  landscapes,  which  were  there 
as  they  might  have  been  in  Nature,  accidentally,  and 
having  followed,  if  one  may  so  say,  the  movement  of 
ground  as  if  they  were  real  beings. 

And  then  many  French  painters,  and  perhaps  others, 
have  the  excellent  habit  of  painting  from  the  figure  as 
an  exercise,  a daily  gymnastic  practice.  And  so  Father 
Corot  liked  to  continue  his  habit  of  studio  study  from 
the  model  whom  he  took  as  he  or  she  might  turn  up. 
Most  of  them  were  vulgar  little  beings,  and  sometimes 
they  are  mere  people  painted  in  the  studio,  and  some- 
times they  are  nymphs  or  beings  of  higher  nature 
challenging  our  memories  of  the  most  superior  idealisa- 
tion. The  great  Ingres  would  not  look  at  the  figures  of 
Corot,  but  his  great  pupil  Flandrin  said  of  them: 
“ They  have  something  which  specialists  have  never  been 
able  to  put  into  theirs.”  Corot  has  explained  somewhat 
the  cause  of  this  exceptional  quality,  exceptional  among 
all  painters  of  figures,  by  this  account — he  allowed 
his  model  to  move  as  much  as  he  or  she  liked.  The 
models  of  his  studio  could  do  very  much  as  they 
liked  and  move  about  as  if  in  their  own  place.  Some 
correct  person  having  alluded  to  these  liberties  of  some 
one  of  them,  Corot  answered : 66  Why  it’s  exactly  that 
restlessness  that  I like  in  that  girl ; I am  not  a specialist 

163 


SIXTH  LECTURE 


doing  a thing  piece  by  piece,  my  aim  is  to  express 
life  and  therefore  I need  a model  that  shall  not  keep 
still.” 

And  as  you  will  see  by  the  various  studies,  however 
careful  they  may  be,  however  innocently  the  costume 
may  be  copied,  however  the  appearance  even  of  a por- 
trait, the  human  being  is  alive  and  is  going  to  move  and 
has  moved.  Take  the  painting  of  the  “ Girl  Reading,” 
who  is  also  walking  gently ; the  observation  of  movement 
is  so  subtle  it  is  difficult  to  understand  why  the  figure 
does  not  look  steady,  nor  would  she  in  Nature.  And 
sometimes  the  model  passes  into  a life  of  poetry  and 
romance  and  we  have  the  “ Bacchante,”  so  called,  still 
a model,  but  so  completely  a part  of  the  landscape,  so 
completely  free  from  the  suggestion  of  a study,  or  an 
imitation  of  prose,  that  the  satyrs  or  nymphs  or  other 
figures  of  classical  recall  in  the  distance,  seem  as  proper 
to  the  place  as  if  the  painter  had  really  seen  them  and 
merely  noted  the  fact  that  they  were  there.  And  yet  it  is 
only  a model  with  a tambourine  and  a leopard’s  skin, 
and  she  is  not  any  more  troubled  by  her  being  half  di- 
vine any  more  than  she  would  have  been  in  reality.  And 
so,  partly  from  great  knowledge,  and  still  more  from 
simplicity  of  mind,  this  landscape  painter  that  we  know 
is  the  equal  of  very  great  men  who  have  painted  the  fig- 

164 


SIXTH  LECTURE 

ure,  even  Rembrandt,  or  Van  der  Meer,  or  Poussin.  But 
he  is  not  like  them,  and  in  such  paintings  as  the  “ Bac- 
chante,” or  the  other  pictures  of  human  beings  whom 
he  has  seen  in  the  light  of  classical  antiquity,  they  are 
all  by  themselves  as  if  the  Greek  figures  of  the  sculptors 
had  become  coloured  and  breathed  in  the  open  air  of  this 
special  place  in  which  Corot  has  seen  them. 

And  now  to  return  to  prose ; it  is  worth  your  while  to 
look  at  the  portrait  of  the  great  caricature  painter 
Daumier  and  to  realise  how  the  honesty  of  the  other 
artist’s  soul  is  given  by  the  artist  whom  we  know  to 
have  been  himself  a straight-minded  and  honourable 
creature. 

I should  like  to  conclude  with  a few  more  general  ex- 
pressions concerning  these  men,  concerning  their  re- 
semblances and  their  differences,  and  perhaps  to  state 
again  in  other  forms  some  of  their  doctrines,  though, 
as  I have  pointed  out  continually,  these  men  were  con- 
servative, were  the  direct  inheritors  of  the  past.  They 
believed  that  they  preached  nothing  but  what  had  al- 
ways been  known,  and  their  justification  was  that  it  was 
so.  With  Delacroix  and  Millet,  whom  I have  to  place  un- 
der the  insufficient  title  of  the  Barbizon  School,  we  have 
seen  a wish  to  express  at  times  religious  emotion  and 
feeling.  In  each  case,  that  of  Delacroix  and  Millet,  the 

165 


SIXTH  LECTURE 

form  of  expression  is  extremely  different,  but  theirs  is 
almost  the  last  successful  attempt.  The  church  itself  has 
scarcely  any  place  at  present  for  such  expression.  The 
religious  feeling  is  permanent  in  man,  but  it  must  of 
course  find  a place  and  opportunity.  The  conditions  of 
the  last  two  centuries  have  not  been  favourable,  and 
to-day’s  are  more  than  doubtful.  The  other  men  of 
whom  I write  have  certainly  expressed  their  moral  na- 
ture in  their  landscapes. 

A story  will  give  us  the  height  of  his  thought  and  the 
deep  feeling  for  human  sentiments  which  filled  the  heart 
of  the  absent-minded  dreamer.  His  statements  were  very 
sudden,  as  you  may  remember  when  he  woke  out  of  his 
astonishment  to  say  something  about  Delacroix’s  work. 
This  anecdote  will  give  all  of  this  in  a few  words.  He  was 
out  with  one  of  his  students  and  they  were  working : the 
sun  was  going  down  and  all  the  splendour  of  dying  day 
was  before  the  artists,  the  young  man  and  the  old  one, 
both  held  by  the  feeling  of  the  moment.  The  young  man 
turned  to  Corot  and  said : “ O Master ! is  not  Nature 
beautiful?”  “Yes  very  beautiful,”  said  Corot,  “but 
Saint  Vincent  de  Paul  is  also  beautiful.  Beautiful,  very 
beautiful.”  The  old  artist  was  thinking  of  the  Sisters  of 
Charity  and  his  one  work  for  the  help  of  the  sick  and 
wounded,  and  the  sense  of  comfort  and  help  of  the 

166 


SIXTH  LECTURE 

great  Giver  of  Light  brought  up  the  feeling  of  thanks 
for  the  man  who  had  devoted  a long  life  to  the  help  of 
the  poor  and  afflicted. 

One  more  word  for  you,  the  students  of  art  I address 
among  the  others.  There  is  another  point  about  the 
study  or  knowledge  of  these  men’s  works  which  will 
help  you.  You  may  not  have  noticed  it  externally,  but 
you  believe  in  it  completely.  As  I say,  you  do  not  always 
realise  that  you  believe  it.  It  is  this — that  it  is  we  who 
are  judged  by  the  work  of  art,  and  that  the  reverse  is 
not  true.  In  all  that  we  have  said  and  in  any  considera- 
tion of  our  artist’s  life  at  any  time  we  come  across  the 
fact  that  his  work  is  either  appreciated  or  not  by  his 
nation  or  his  surrounding.  If  he  is  great  and  applauded 
as  with  Michael  Angelo,  we  laud  the  race  and  the  nation 
and  they  remain  forever  adorned  by  this  glory  of  ap- 
preciation. By  the  work  of  art  then  we  judge  them.  If 
there  be  slow  success,  as  with  two  or  three  of  these  men 
of  ours  who  still  wait  for  full  recognition,  you  know 
that  it  is  because  their  public  was  stupid  and  unde- 
veloped, or  ill-read,  or  provincial  in  some  way  or  other 
and  we  judge  that  public  by  these  works  of  art.  And 
slowly  the  public  in  these  cases  has  been  educated. 

Art  is  like  a mirror  and  reflects.  In  fact,  the  French 
artists  have  a fierce  studio-saying  about  the  pictures 

167 


SIXTH  LECTURE 

of  pretty  women  as  mirrors ; like  the  Bi  Jin  of  the 
Japanese  kakemono. 

In  the  student  or  younger  artist,  therefore,  the  ques- 
tions of  patience  and  endurance  may  become  the  natural 
mode  of  life  in  which  the  artist  must  live  if  he  wishes  to 
achieve  an  intellectual  existence  of  his  own. 

Nature  to  these  men  was  not  a thing  to  copy  from,  but 
in  Dupre’s  wording — and  it  is  a large  wording — “ their 
painting  from  Nature  was  an  excuse  for  the  statement 
of  their  capacity  for  reverence  and  admiration.”  These 
excuses  they  did  not  always  find  in  the  art  about  them 
and  its  representatives.  They  found  about  them,  and 
perhaps  to  their  surprise  and  official  coldness,  a mili- 
tary dogmatism  in  church  and  state;  and  in  France 
especially,  the  church  had  little  to  do  but  what  the 
state  granted,  even  in  art.  But  the  state  long  ago  had 
laid  its  hand  on  art,  as  on  everything  that  it  could 
regulate.  The  military  organisations  of  Napoleon 
reached  after  him  into  the  domain  of  art  and  literature, 
and  the  great  educational  mechanisms  of  France  are  the 
means  of  controlling  the  powers  which  in  their  essence 
are  the  freest  function  of  man. 

By  the  management  of  state  patronage  a hierarchy 
is  established  which  holds  the  farthest  removed  in  some 
manner  of  control  by  those  chosen  by  the  state.  Conse- 

168 


COLLECTION  OF  M.  RYERSON 


COROT 

NOW  IN  THE  COLLECTION  OF  JOHN  G.  JOHNSON 


COROT:  “VILLE  D’AVRAY— MORNING 


COROT 

“ LANDSCAPE  ” 

NOW  IN  THE  COLLECTION  OF  SIR  GEORGE  DRUMMOND,  MONTREAL 


“DANSE  DES 
NYMPHES  ” 


COROT 

“LA  DANSE  DES  AMOURS 


IN  THE  COLLECTION  OF  GEORGE  J.  GOULD 


PSgSj"g!£« 


COROT 

“LA  PETITE  CURIEUSE ” 

NOW  IN  THE  COLLECTION  OF  SIR  W.  C.  VAN  HORNE,  MONTREAL 


COROT 

“GIRL  READING 


NOW  IN  THE  COLLECTION  OF  JAMES  J.  HILL 


COROT 

THE  WOUNDED  EURYDICE” 


NOW  IN  THE  COLLECTION  OF  JAMES  J.  HILL 


COROT 

^L' ATELIER  ” 


NOW  IN  THE  COLLECTION  OF  P.  A.  B.  WIDENER 


SIXTH  LECTURE 

quently  the  struggle  has  been  for  ambitious  talents  to 
get  some  place  in  this  machinery  which  would  insure 
them  for  life  a safe  position,  but  under  military  con- 
ditions of  obedience  and  discipline  and  the  keeping  out 
of  all  others  who,  knowingly  or  not,  believed  in  inde- 
pendence of  thought  or  feeling.  The  reason  or  secret 
of  the  constant  opposition  to  this  group  of  men  of  ours 
is  thus  a perfectly  natural  one.  They  were  forced  into 
an  antagonism  from  which  morally  and  intellectually 
they  could  not  escape,  nor  did  they  always  know  how 
much  they  were  in  opposition.  They  pursued  what  are 
called  ideals,  which  allow  little  compromise.  It  may  be 
said  that  they  were  imprudent,  that  they  might  have 
yielded  some  few  higher  ideals  to  practical  success,  but 
in  reality  they  were  mostly  unaware  of  the  danger  of 
their  tendencies.  They  scarcely  knew  how  they  were  the 
successors  of  the  great  artists  who  were  recommended 
and  preached  by  the  government  schools.  As  Fromentin 
has  put  it,  the  Academy  and  the  school  on  the  con- 
trary, clearly  saw  behind  these  men  the  hated  traditions 
of  Rubens  and  Rembrandt.  They,  on  the  contrary,  like 
the  devotees  of  science,  saw  only  the  disinterested  end 
which  they  pursued  with  difficulty  and  mostly  in  ad- 
versity. Nor  can  we  blame  them  any  more  than  we  do 
the  mathematician  or  the  astronomer  whose  calculations 

169 


SIXTH  LECTURE 


aim  at  abstract  results.  We  know,  and  they  know  too, 
that  there  is  no  absolute  mathematics  in  practice,  but  it 
is  only  by  the  pursuit  of  such  abstractions  that  the 
progress  of  our  practical  science  advances.  These  men 
are  bound  together  more  lastingly  to  us,  than  they 
could  have  been  to  themselves,  by  the  opposition  of  the 
great  government  influences  which  still  rule  in  France. 
Their  not  being  in  the  authorised  list  of  producers  of 
aid:  leaves  the  official  art  of  France  relatively  barren  of 
production  and  more  of  a mere  common-school  force. 
The  names  of  these  men  also  are  those  which  have  been 
carried  throughout  the  world.  Their  names  are  known 
far  beyond  the  limits  they  knew  themselves,  and  their 
fame  is  as  great  as  if  they  had  not  been  Frenchmen. 
In  some  form  or  other  all  outside  art  has  been  influenced 
by  them,  and  their  names  are  types  of  forms  of  art. 
With  all  of  them,  except  perhaps  the  favourite,  Diaz,  a 
certain  moral  dignity,  a certain  human  value,  is  part 
of  the  very  texture,  the  fibre  of  their  work.  Through 
its  weight  it  has  helped  to  carry  their  influence  out  of 
the  fashion  of  their  native  land.  It  has  made  more  sym- 
pathetic some  of  the  beauties  which  they  tried  to  em- 
body. So  that  however  partial  and  deficient  were  some 
of  them,  it  may  be  said  of  their  works,  in  the  words  the 
Greeks  used  for  their  favourite  poets,  that  “ many 

170 


SIXTH  LECTURE 

times  the  immortal  gods  themselves  had  chosen  to  be 
seated  at  their  hearthstone.” 

We  have  said  that  these  men  have  made,  to  a cer- 
tain extent,  almost  all  of  us.  All  modern  painters  or 
draughtsmen  to  whom  the  word  values  is  a guide  owe 
something — sometimes  a great  deal — to  the  fact  that 
these  men  carried  the  older  tradition  through  the  dark- 
est part  of  the  nineteenth  century.  They  helped  also 
foreign  artists  of  all  kinds  who  could  not  get  govern- 
ment instruction  in  France,  or  who  disliked  it,  or  from 
some  manner  or  other — sometimes  mere  accident — were 
excluded  from  it.  One  of  my  friends  who  with  me  pur- 
sued for  many  years  the  modern  scientific  study  of  the 
relations  of  light  and  colour,  with  the  hope  of  using  it 
for  our  work,  missed  his  chance  at  the  government 
school,  as  one  of  these  men  did,  by  the  mere  slip  of  a 
little  formula.  He  drew  under  the  model  whose  picture 
he  had  made  for  the  competition,  the  black  stand,  the 
cube  of  polished  wood  on  which  the  model  stood.  He 
made  it  black,  with  a reflection — and  that  excluded  his 
drawing.  This  anecdote  is  a way  of  stating  how  small 
the  reason  was  by  which  a foreigner  or  a native  might 
not  get  under  government  instruction.  Many  of  them, 
as  did  my  friend,  regretted  it  somewhat ; he  would  have 
been  anyhow  an  independent  man  in  meaning  and  in 

171 


SIXTH  LECTURE 

thought,  but  he  would  have  liked  to  have  had,  as  it  were, 
some  work  in  what  he  thought  was  rather  the  enemy’s 
camp. 

In  one  of  my  lectures  I think  I referred  to  one  of  our 
artists,  to  Winslow  Homer,  as  having  been  influenced  by 
these  men.  It  is  so  true  that  away  far  back  in  the  fifties, 
not  being  able  to  see  the  originals,  he  drew  from  the 
French  lithographs  we  had  here,  which  were  almost  en- 
tirely devoted  to  the  reproduction  of  the  work  of  these 
men.  At  that  time  we  had  but  very  few  examples  in 
the  country,  exceedingly  few,  perhaps  it  might  be  said 
none,  of  Corot,  none  of  Rousseau.  By  chance  there  hap- 
pened to  be  a few  Millets.  The  foundation  then  in  great 
part  of  such  an  independent  talent — I might  say  more 
than  talent,  of  such  a genius  as  Mr.  Winslow  Homer’s 
— refers  back  then  to  this  school  and  to  the  teachings, 
the  inevitable  teachings,  even  from  studying  them  in 
translations. 

On  that,  as  a proof  again  of  what  I wish  students  to 
understand,  is  built  a form  of  painting  as  absolutely 
different  as  it  could  possibly  be ; a thoroughly  American 
system  of  painting,  a representation  of  American  light 
and  air,  of  everything  that  makes  the  distinction;  even 
the  moral  fibre  and  character  of  New  England  being 
depicted  all  through  the  picture,  whether  it  be  the 

172 


SIXTH  LECTURE 

rocks  and  the  sea,  or  the  men  who  hang  about 
them. 

Those  are  the  lessons  that  these  men  give.  I only  refer 
to  that  to  encourage  you,  those  of  you  who  are  stu- 
dents, to  look  to  these  men  for  the  principles  rather  than 
sometimes  the  practice  of  their  work.  For  of  course 
they,  like  all  men  of  the  nineteenth  century,  almost  with- 
out exception,  painted  not  so  well  as  they  ought  to. 
That  is  to  say  that  the  older  traditions,  those  beautiful 
traditions  which  allow  you  to  see  a work  of  a Flemish 
painter  over  four  hundred  years  old  in  all  its  freshness, 
had  departed.  The  real  intention  of  oil  painting  had 
been  more  or  less  disfigured.  The  use  of  unfortunate 
colours  prepared  for  them  by  new  chemistry,  and  also 
by  traders  on  the  new  chemistry,  has  changed  most  of 
their  pictures.  I am  old  enough  to  remember  some  of 
the  famous  ones  and  to  be  shocked  at  the  way  they 
look  to-day. 

But  as  I reflect,  there  are  exceedingly  important 
points  to  be  dwelt  upon  which  these  men  touch.  As  I 
have  been  questioned  by  students  outside  of  my  lectures 
upon  the  point,  I want  to  bring  again  to  your  atten- 
tion the  question  of  the  difference  between  the  study  and 
the  picture.  In  reality  the  question  is  very  simple,  but 
like  all  very  simple  questions,  it  is  veiled  at  corners — 

173 


SIXTH  LECTURE 


veiled  at  certain  places — by  our  using  words  which  do 
not  cover  particular  points.  It  may  be  said  that  the  in- 
vention of  the  frame,  but  let  us  go  back,  the  study  then, 
let  us  say,  is  a copy,  or  pursuit,  of  a part  of  Nature 
with  the  mere  intention  of  knowing  well  for  one’s  self 
what  one  happens  to  be  looking  for.  The  study  may 
cover  all  the  impressions  that  you  receive  as  far  as  you 
are  capable,  or  only  a few.  It  is  evidently  quite  possible 
to  make  your  study  without  colour,  or  with  more  or 
less  colour.  It  is  possible  to  pursue  your  study  in  the 
shapes  of  outline.  It  is  possible  to  pursue  your  study 
in  the  mere  shape  of  form.  It  is  possible  to  care  for 
nothing  for  the  moment  but  the  values  of  certain  places 
as  you  go  along.  It  is  possible  to  look  only  for  the 
colours.  It  is  possible  in  a larger  way  to  make  a note  of 
the  time  of  day,  to  make  a note  of  the  relation  of  sun- 
light and  shadow.  It  is  possible — as  in  the  drawings 
which  I once  had  in  my  hands  for  a few  hours,  the  draw- 
ings of  the  note-books  of  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds — it  is 
possible  to  make  a study  of  how  much  space  the  middle 
tone  occupies  in  what  you  see,  of  where  the  highest 
light  is,  and  how  many  times  the  highest  light  will  occur 
in  such  and  such  proportion,  of  how  far  the  dark  can 
be  in  the  middle  of  what  you  are  looking  at,  and  how 
far  you  can  move  it  to  the  side.  All  this  is  in  the  sketch- 

174 


SIXTH  LECTURE 

books  of  Sir  Joshua  done  with  the  point  of  a pencil : a 
mere  scribble,  and  a little  circular  line  run  round  such 
a space,  or  an  irregular  one  in  case  he  wished  to  insist 
on  the  irregularity  of  distribution;  all  these  ways  are 
studies,  and  do  not  by  my  definition  make  a picture. 
We  might  say  that  the  difference  is  made  in  this  way: 
The  invention  of  a frame — that  is  to  say  the  rectangu- 
lar border,  or  the  circular  border,  or  any  other  border 
which  you  wish  to  choose — but  these  are  the  evident 
ones  known  to  all  mankind,  and  mostly  the  rectangular 
border  or  frame.  The  frame  decides  the  question,  for 
there  is  no  frame  in  Nature.  The  moment  that  you  begin 
to  set  your  picture  or  your  study  on  a square  piece  of 
paper,  and  with  relation  to  that  square  piece  of  paper, 
you  have  decided  already  an  artistic  conventional 
formula,  because  if  we  carried  out  logically  what  we 
see  we  should  not  have  a square  result.  Hence,  some- 
times the  very  honest  student  is  astonished  at  finding 
that  his  study  is  uneven  and  the  corners  left  blank,  or 
they  are  not  even  corners,  because  as  long  as  he  really 
gives  his  real  impression  they  are  of  necessity  irregular. 
They  represent  maybe  corners  and  ovals  blended  to- 
gether. Even  I myself,  with  fifty  or  sixty  years  of  study- 
ing and  sketching  from  Nature,  find  it  difficult  when  I 
am  making  nothing  but  a really  conscientious  study  of 

175 


SIXTH  LECTURE 


a new  view  in  place,  to  remember  to  fill  in  the  corners 
of  my  paper  and  canvas.  If  once  I have  not  done  it  I 
find  it  impossible  to  be  sure  of  what  was  there.  In  so  far 
I am  pleased  when  that  happens  to  me.  It  shows  me  that 
I am  still  a faithful  observer  of  Nature.  Hence,  as  you 
know,  the  so-called  impressionists,  men  who  have  been 
trying  to  develop  still  further  the  representations  of 
light  and  colour  through  various  mechanisms  have  had 
great  difficulty  at  once  with  their  frames,  because  if 
they  were  were  absolutely  truthful  there  would  be  no 
frame;  there  cannot  be  any.  They  have  to  step  from 
Nature  into  the  world  of  art.  And  perhaps  you  know  the 
difficult  plight  of  many  of  my  friends  with  regard  to 
dodging  that  question.  Some  of  the  weaker-minded  ones, 
and  the  more  logical  ones  too,  have  painted  their  frames 
in  different  ways,  have  painted  their  frames  in  different 
colours,  have  lopped  over  the  frame,  and  have  thought 
that  by  lopping  over  the  frame  that  the  suggestion  of 
irregularity  would  be  sufficient,  but  none  of  them  have 
ever  had  the  courage  to  paint  in  the  outline  of  the  frame 
which  they  really  saw,  because  it  would  be  too  ugly,  too 
impossible  for  the  human  mind. 

How  the  frame  first  came  about,  I mean  how  it 
came  by  this  arbitrary  shape,  I do  not  know.  I have 
not  as  yet  found  an  adequate  explanation.  I have  cross- 

176 


SIXTH  LECTURE 

questioned  without  result  so-called  savages  with  whom 
I have  lived,  and  I have  watched  their  ways  of  work  and 
their  ideas  of  representation  of  Nature,  and  I do  know 
that  at  some  remote  period  they  invented  a rectangular 
frame,  but  that  they  did  for  decoration.  When  they 
came  to  representation,  the  so-called  savages  never  tried 
to  make  what  we  call  a picture,  or  a realization  of  some- 
thing in  a place,  and  that  place  the  frame.  They  were 
trying  always  to  make  a symbol,  or  what  we  call  a draw- 
ing. I have  seen  even  their  children  make  very  beautiful 
drawings,  mostly  in  the  sand,  sometimes  when  given  a 
pencil.  The  difficulty  of  the  pencil  was  in  their  way,  that 
is  to  say,  it  was  an  unaccustomed  form  of  friction.  They 
represented  both  the  real  outline  and  the  suggestion  of 
form  in  a single  sweep  very  much  like  what  we  see  in  very 
accomplished  draughtsmen,  in  Raphael  for  instance, 
or  Ingres  and  so  forth,  and  the  two  extremes  met  in 
the  savage  child.  All  my  savage  artist  was  after  was  to 
give  the  symbol  which  represented  the  animal  or  what- 
ever it  was  that  he  tried  to  show  and  never  was  able.  I 
don’t  believe  that  the  savage  has  understood  the  frame. 
Therefore  I don’t  know  when  it  began.  There  may  have 
been  the  including  of  the  picture  or  symbol  inside  of  the 
decorative  frame,  and  then  the  passage  from  that  to  our 
realisation  of  Nature.  That  realisation  from  Nature 

177 


SIXTH  LECTURE 


went  on  in  the  middle  of  the  last  century  in  a form  which 
we  know.  Men  like  Meissonier  for  instance,  struggled 
in  a race  with  the  photograph.  The  photograph  or  the 
whole  system  of  photography  was  being  developed. 
They  followed  in  the  track  which  our  ancestors  have 
followed  for  so  long,  a sort  of  struggle  with  Nature.  We 
see  it  far  back  with  Leonardo.  We  see  the  way  through 
the  scale  from  then,  the  anxiety  to  have  a record  of  all 
the  facts  of  Nature. 

The  photograph  then  is  the  other  racer  in  the  course, 
and  it  might  be  some  day  that  the  vision  of  Nature 
would  be  still  nearer  if  the  photograph — the  machine — 
should  be  able  to  give  a little  accurate  colour.  Then  per- 
haps that  line  will  be  cut  off  and  some  great  revolt  of 
feeling  might  come.  But  that  is  a mere  manner  of  let- 
ting you  understand  that  I do  not  mean  that  the  men 
of  the  other  schools  were  unjustifiable.  They  were  fol- 
lowing, as  I say,  the  conquest  of  Nature  and  not  the 
conquest  of  art.  They  were  artists  and  they  thought 
that  they  followed  art  more,  but  they  really  in  their 
own  way  were  trying  to  justify  themselves  by  their 
correct  appreciation  of  Nature. 

One  thing  more  as  I close  the  subjects  of  our  talks. 
I don’t  mean  to  diminish  any  one’s  part  nor  take  part 
of  any  one  away.  Nor  is  it  necessary  because  we  like 

178 


SIXTH  LECTURE 

a man  very  much  that  we  should  think  him  bigger 
than  others.  He  may  be  smaller  and  on  account  of  that 
smallness  better  fitted  to  ourselves.  It  is  evident  that 
the  life  with  the  greater  beings  cannot  be  so  easy. 
That  is  the  reason  why  in  presenting  our  dear  old 
friend  Diaz,  I have  still  kept  to  the  fact  that  he  was 
relatively  a small  man  compared  to  most  of  his  friends, 
but  a charming  creature,  a man  whose  work  is  fit  to 
be  placed  anywhere,  to  give  you  that  same  charm  that 
you  get,  let  us  say  from  flowers.  Is  there  anything 
against  the  flower  that  it  should  not  have  the  intel- 
lectual significance  of  other  things  that  we  look  at? 
And  that  is  always  worth  thinking  of.  The  smaller  man 
may  have  his  own  perfect  existence,  and  for  our  benefit 
Decamps,  whom  I do  not  wish  to  consider  on  the  same 
high  plane  with  Delacroix  (and  who  might  perhaps  have 
reached  a higher  plane  of  his  own  if  he  had  lived), 
Decamps  has  shown  us — and  that  is  what  I insisted  on  in 
our  representations  on  the  screen — the  use  of  certain 
formulae,  and  in  those  smaller  formulae  he  is  a great 
man.  He  has  his  own  life  and  his  own  interpretations 
just  as  much  as  the  greatest.  That  lesson  ought  to 
satisfy  all  pupils.  There  is  no  school,  if  one  may  so  say, 
in  Nature  or  in  art  that  we  can  absolutely  measure. 


179 


INDEX 


No  attempt  has  been  made  to  give  detailed  references  to 
Corot,  Daubigny,  Decamps,  Delacroix,  Diaz,  Dupre,  Millet, 
and  Rousseau  within  the  Lectures  of  which  they  are  the  subject 
matter.  Under  the  name  of  each  artist  mention  is  made  of  the 
pages  in  the  particular  Lecture  devoted  entirely  or  in  part  to 
said  artist. 

The  titles  of  paintings  are  given  in  Italics. 


Algerian  Women  at  Home  ( Alge- 
rian Women  in  Their  Room), 
Delacroix,  The  Louvre,  57, 
58,  155 
Allston,  31 

An  Episode  of  the  Massacres  of 
Scio  ( The  Massacre  of  Scio ), 
Delacroix,  The  Louvre,  42, 
44,  48 

Apollo,  Ceiling  of  the  Gallery  of. 
The  Louvre,  Delacroix,  20 
Aquinas,  Saint  Thomas,  on  the 
“ innocence  ” of  Art,  85 

Bacchante,  Corot,  164,  165 
Barque  of  Dante , The  ( Dante  and 
Virgil  Crossing  the  Infernal 
Lake),  Delacroix,  44,  46,  57,  98 


Barye,  friend  of  Delacroix,  59 
his  work  and  Delacroix,  65 
his  friendship  for  and  apprecia- 
tion of  Rousseau,  134 
Belmont,  August,  early  American 
collector  of  Barbizon  pictures, 
119 

Bertin,  the  classical  formulist  land- 
scape painter,  teacher  of  Dau- 
bigny, 144 
Blake,  33 

Byron,  Lord,  his  influence  on  the 
Dramatic  School  and  on  Dela- 
croix, 17,  30,  47,  52 

Cabat,  a co-student  of  Diaz,  117 
early  association  with  Dupre, 
142 

181 


INDEX 


Chardin,  23 

appreciated  by  the  men  of  the 
new  movement,  31 
Chasseriau,  Theodore,  his  promise 
of  conciliating  the  opposite 
Schools,  11 
and  Ingres,  11,  13 
and  Delacroix,  11,  13 
and  Puvis  de  Chavannes,  12 
and  Millet,  12 
his  life,  11,  14,  15 
his  work  in  the  Cour  des  Comp- 
tes,  11 

the  secret  of  his  career,  15,  16 
Chateaubriand,  his  influence  on 
the  painters  of  1830,  30 
Chavannes,  Puvis  de,  and  Chas- 
seriau, 12 

and  Delacroix,  55,  61,  62 
Children  Watching  a Tortoise , De- 
camps, 105 

Christ  Crossing  the  Lake  of  Genes- 
areth,  Decamps,  108 
Christ  in  the  Garden , Delacroix, 
52 

Classical  School,  represented  by 
Ingres,  10 
Claude,  144 

Corot,  see  particularly  Sixth  Lec- 
ture, 151-179 
fame  established,  7,  8,  65 
and  Delacroix,  69,  70 
represents  the  doctrine  of  “val- 
ues,” 110 

a painter  of  the  human  figure, 
127,  128 

his  imitators,  129 


Corot,  see  also  Girl  Reading , and 
Bacchante. 

Correggio,  admired  by  Diaz,  119 

Courbet,  8 

Cour  des  Comptes,  and  the  paint- 
ings of  Chasseriau,  1 1 

Couture,  8 

his  comparison  of  Diaz  and 
Rousseau,  120 

Dante,  and  Delacroix’s  subjects,  52 

Dante  and  Virgil  Crossing  the 
Infernal  Lake  ( The  Barque 
of  Dante),  Delacroix,  The 
Louvre,  44,  46,  57,  98 

Daubigny,  Charles  Francis,  see 
particularly  Fifth  Lecture, 
144-147 

David  and  the  Empire  Classical 
School,  7,  9 

Death  of  Sardanapedus,  Delacroix, 
52 

Decamps,  see  particularly  Fourth 
Lecture,  95-123 
and  Delacroix,  65,  179 
and  Rousseau,  134 
a recorder  of  Nature,  140 
See  also  Children  Watching  a 
Tortoise,  Christ  Crossing  the 
Lake  of  Genesareth,  Defeat  of 
the  Cimbri  by  Marius,  Diog- 
enes, Joseph  Sold  by  His 
Brethren,  Le  Chasseur,  The 
Muses,  Porte  de  Ferme,  The 
Samson  Series,  The  Shepherd, 
The  Smoker,  Syrian  Land- 
scape, Tower  of  Bordeaux, 


182 


INDEX 


Turkish  Butcher , Turkish 
Cavalry  Passing  a Ford,  Turk- 
ish Children  Coming  out  of 
School,  Watch  at  Smyrna,  The 
Witches. 

Defeat  of  the  Cimbri  by  Marius , 
Decamps,  109 

Delaberge,  a precursor  of  pre- 
Raphaelism,  143 

Delacroix,  see  particularly  Second 
Lecture,  27-66 

his  name  representative  of  the 
Romantic  School,  8,  10 
influence  on  Chasseriau,  11-13 
influenced  by  literature,  17 
student  of  real  life,  18,  19 
a dramatist,  20,  21 
characteristics  of  his  work,  22,  23 
admired  by  Millet,  69 
dramatic  and  lyrical  power  and 
expression,  70-72 
a user  of  the  nude,  86 
and  Millet,  70,  82,  95,  96 
influence  on  Diaz,  117,  119 
and  Rousseau,  134 
and  Dupre,  143 
his  expression  of  religious  feel- 
ing, 165 
and  Corot,  166 
and  Decamps,  179 
See  also  Algerian  Women  at 
Home  ( Algerian  Women  in 
Their  Room),  The  Barque  of 
Dante  ( Dante  and  Virgil 
Crossing  the  Infernal  Lake), 
Christ  in  The  Garden,  Death 
of  Sardanapalus,  Guard  of 


the  Sultan,  Jewish  Marriage , 
L’Amende  Honorable,  Mad 
Dervishes  of  Tangier s,  Marino 
Faliero,  Massacre  of  Scio  (An 
Episode  of  the  Massacres  of 
Scio),  TriumphoftheGodofDay 
over  the  Powers  of  Darkness. 
Delaroche,  teacher  of  Millet,  47, 
80,  81 

De  Musset,  and  the  Romantic 
movement,  30 

Descent  of  the  Bohemians,  Diaz, 
Boston  Museum,  119 
De  Vigny,  and  the  Romantic 
movement,  30 

Diaz,  see  particularly  Fourth  Lec- 
ture, 95-123 

a favorite  with  the  differing 
Schools,  8 

the  springtime  of  his  career,  65 
and  Dupre,  143,  170,  179 
See  also  Descent  of  the  Bohe- 
mians, F ountainebleau  Forest, 
Les  Odalisques 
Diogenes,  Decamps,  105 
Dore,  Gustave,  his  indebtedness 
to  Decamps,  112 

Dupre,  see  particularly  Fifth  Lec- 
ture, 127-147 
his  early  recognition,  8 
and  Diaz,  117,  119,  123 
and  Daubigny,  146 
and  Corot,  159 

his  definition  of  the  attitude  of 
his  fellows,  168 

Dutch  School,  The,  and  the  Bar- 
bizon  men,  135 

183 


INDEX 


Faust,  as  treated  by  Delacroix,  21 

Feilding,  fellow-student  and  friend 
of  Delacroix,  46 

Flandrin,  exponent  of  the  Academ- 
ic teaching,  10 
comment  on  Corot,  163 

Fontainebleau  Forest , Diaz,  pur- 
chased in  the  sixties  by  August 
Belmont;  now  in  the  collection 
of  his  son.  Perry  Belmont, 
119 

Fontainebleau  School,  27,  86 
forest,  27,  73 

Fromentin,  on  the  old  and  the  new 
Schools,  169 

Gainsborough,  7,  42 

Gallery  of  Apollo,  in  The  Louvre, 
painting  by  Delacroix,  20, 
61 

Gericault,  early  paintings,  8 

companion,  and  fellow-student 
of  Delacroix,  35,  36 
precursor  of  the  Romantic 
School,  36 

first  famous  painting,  36 
his  theories  and  teachings,  38-40 
death  by  accident,  41 
See  also  Portrait  of  Mr.  M.,  Raft 
of  “La  Meduse ,”  Wounded 
Cuirassier  Leaving  the  Field 
of  Battle 

Gerome,  a promising  disciple  of 
the  Academy,  9 

his  work  influenced  by  the  “ the- 
atre notion,”  55 

Giotto,  55 


Girl  Reading , Corot,  now  in  coll, 
of  J.  J.  Hii:,  164 

Goethe,  and  Delacroix,  17,  30,  52, 

57 

Greuze,  7 

Gros,  offers  to  take  Delacroix  with 
him,  45 

Guard  of  the  Sultan,  Delacroix, 

58 

Guido,  10 

Hamlet,  as  portrayed  by  Dela- 
croix, 21 

Heine,  his  “King  Richard  Coeur- 
de-Lion,”  and  Delacroix’s  lyr- 
ical attitude,  71 

Homer,  Winslow,  influenced  by 
the  Barbizon  men,  172 
Huet,  the  influence  of  his  work  on 
Dupre,  143 

Hugo,  Victor,  and  the  Romantic 
movement,  30 

Hunt,  William,  comment  on  the 
Barbizon  men,  7 
early  friend  and  admirer  of  Mil- 
let, 87 

Ingres,  his  name  represents  the 
Classical  School,  8,  10 
and  Chasseriau,  11,  13 
his  views  once  held  doubtful,  39 
and  Corot,  163,  177 
Italians,  The  Early,  and  the  Bar- 
bizon men,  135 

Jansenism,  76,  77 
Jewish  Marriage,  Delacroix,  57 
184 


INDEX 


Joseph  Sold  by  His  Brethren , De- 
camps, now  in  coll,  of  J.  J. 
Hill,  113 

“King  Richard  Coeur-de-Lion,” 
of  Heine,  and  Delacroix’s  lyri- 
cal attitude,  71 

Lamartine,  30 

L'Amende  Honorable , Delacroix 
now  in  the  Willstach  coll., 
Philadelphia,  69 

La  Descente  des  V aches,  Rousseau, 
134 

Lawrence,  Sir  Thomas,  7 
character  of  his  art,  33 
Le  Chasseur , Decamps,  104 
Leonardo,  and  the  struggle  of  Art 
with  Nature,  178 
Les  Odalisques , Diaz,  120 
Louvre,  The,  Millet  in,  80 
Dupre  and  Cabat  in,  142 
See  Gallery  of  Apollo 
Luxembourg  Gallery,  Millet  on 
the  pictures  of  the,  70 

Mad  Dervishes  of  Tangiers,  Dela- 
croix, 58 
Manet,  8 

Marino  Faliero,  Delacroix,  52 
Massacre  at  Scio,  The,  (An  Episode 
of  the  Massacres  at  Scio),  Del- 
acroix, The  Louvre,  42,  47, 
48 

Meissonier,  pall-bearer  of  Diaz, 
123 

and  photography,  178 


Michelangelo,  and  Delacroix,  19, 
22,  73 

influence  on  Millet,  80,  86,  167 

Millet,  Jean  Francis,  7,  8,  172. 
See  particularly  Third  Lec- 
ture, 69-91 

his  work  and  that  of  Chasseriau, 

12 

early  acknowledgment  in  Amer- 
ica, 28 

his  admiration  for  Delacroix,  21 
comparison  and  traits  in  com- 
mon with  Delacroix,  65,  95,  96 
disparages  criticism  of  Delacroix, 
64 

comparison  with  Decamps,  106 
and  Rousseau,  136 
and  the  Barbizon  School,  151 
religious  expression,  165 

Montaigne,  76 

Muses,  The,  Decamps,  105,  106 

Napoleon,  his  influence  on  French 
art,  28,  31 

Pascal,  76 

Pena,  Narciso  Diaz  de  la,  see  Diaz 

Porte  de  Ferme,  Decamps,  now 
in  coll,  of  J.  W.  Simpson, 
106 

Portrait  of  Daumier , Corot,  165 

Portrait  of  Mr.  M.,  Gericault,  The 
Louvre,  36 

Poussin,  and  Corot’s  figure  paint- 
ing, 165 

Prix  de  Rome,  and  Delacroix  and 
Millet,  47 


185 


INDEX 


Raffet,  apprentice  with  Diaz,  117 
Raft  of  “La  Meduse,”  Gericault, 
The  Louvre,  41,  42 
Raphael,  and  the  art  of  Ingres,  10 
and  Chasseriau,  16 
his  influence  upon  Delacroix,  22 
his  drawings,  177 
Rembrandt,  and  Delacroix,  19,  51, 
54,  98 

and  Corot,  the  figure  painter,  165 
and  the  Barbizon  men,  31,  135, 
169 

Reynolds,  Sir  Joshua,  7 

admired  by  Gericault  and  Dela- 
croix, 42 

the  drawings  of  his  note-books, 
174 

Rodin,  Delacroix  and  the  studio 
in  painting  and  sculpture,  59, 
60,  154 

Romantic  School,  represented  by 
Delacroix,  10 
Gericault  a precursor,  36 
Rousseau,  see  particularly  Fifth 
Lecture,  127-147 
early  recognition,  7,  8 
at  time  of  Delacroix’s  death, 
65 

friendship  for  Millet,  80 
at  Barbizon  with  Millet,  86 
admired  by  Diaz,  119 
compared  with  Diaz  by  Cou- 
ture, 120,  172 

See  also  La  Descente  des  V aches. 
Rubens,  as  compared  with  and  in- 
fluence upon  Delacroix,  17, 
19,  22,  51,  63 


Rubens,  paintings  in  the  Museum 
at  Cherbourg,  where  Millet 
studied,  79 

and  the  Barbizon  men,  169 

St.  Francis  of  Assisi,  Millet  and 
his  grandmother,  74 
Saint  Sulpice,  church  of,  paintings 
of  Delacroix,  62 

Samson  Series,  The,  Decamps,  111, 
112 

Samson  Watching  the  Fires  Which 
He  has  Lit,  Decamps,  112 
Samson  at  the  Mill,  Decamps,  113 
Samson  Breaking  his  Bonds,  De- 
camps, 113 

Scheffer,  Ary,  and  Rousseau,  132, 
134 

Sensier,  letters  of  Millet  to,  80,  87 
Shakespeare,  and  Delacroix,  17, 
52 

Shelley,  30 

Shepherd , The,  Decamps,  99 
Smoker,  The,  Decamps,  100 
Syrian  Landscape,  Decamps,  Wal- 
lace coll.,  London,  101,  102, 
105,  106 

Tintoretto,  his  art  and  Delacroix’s, 
19 

Millet’s  resemblance  with,  85 
Titian,  his  art  and  Delacroix’s,  51 
Triumph  of  the  God  of  Day  over 
the  Powers  of  Darkness,  Dela- 
croix, ceiling  of  the  Gallery 
of  Apollo,  The  Louvre,  61 
Tower  of  Bordeaux,  Decamps,  106 


INDEX 


Turgot,  and  Delacroix’s  father, 
42 

Turkish  Butcher,  Decamps,  102 

Turkish  Cavalry  Passing  a Ford, 
Decamps,  107 

Turkish  Children  Coming  Out  of 
School,  Decamps,  105 

Turner,  7,  32 

his  work  and  that  of  Decamps, 
112 

Van  der  Meer,  and  the  figure  work 
of  Corot,  165 


Velasquez,  influence  on  the  Bar- 
bizon  men,  31 

Watch  at  Smyrna,  Decamps,  105 
Watteau,  his  technique  of  painting, 
23 

appreciation  of  his  art  by  the 
Barbizon  men,  31 
Whistler,  belated  recognition,  157 
Witches,  The,  Decamps,  106 
Wordsworth,  30 

Wounded  Cuirassier  Leaving  the 
Field  of  Battle,  Gericault,  38 


THE  END 


GETTY 


RESEARCH 


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